Tuesday, November 5, 2019
Delivering 'Catastrophic Message in a Moment of Great Urgency,' Trump Formally Begins Ditching Paris Climate Deal
"President Trump's
decision to walk away from the Paris agreement is irresponsible and
shortsighted."
Monday, November 04, 2019
As President Donald Trump's
administration on Monday took the first step to formally withdraw from the
Paris agreement, climate campaigners reiterated concerns about the United
States ditching the landmark 2015 deal that aims to bring countries together to
tackle the climate emergency.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo announced the move in a tweet Monday, the first day that world leaders
could begin the one-year withdrawal process:
In response, Alden Meyer,
director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and
a leading expert on the United Nations' international climate negotiations
process, warned that "President Trump's decision to walk away from the
Paris agreement is irresponsible and shortsighted. All too many people are already
experiencing the costly and harmful impacts of climate change in the form of
rising seas, more intense hurricanes and wildfires, and record-breaking
temperatures."
The primary goal of
the Paris accord is to "strengthen the global response to the threat of
climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2
degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the
temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius."
Trump announced his
intention to abandon the agreement, which was backed by the Obama
administration, in a June 2017 speech. In the two years since, every nation on
earth has
pledged support for the accord, which went into effect on Nov. 4,
2016. No country was allowed to withdraw for three years.
The Trump administration was
required to send a
letter to the United Nations to begin the withdrawal process. U.S. State
Department spokesperson James Dewey had told The
Associated Press Friday that "the U.S. position with respect to the
Paris agreement has not changed. The United States intends to withdraw from the
Paris agreement."
"The total retreat by
President Trump and his administration in the global fight against climate
change is the definition of betrayal," declared Environmental
Working Group president Ken Cook. "The U.S. and the world are rapidly
running out of time to stave off the worst impacts of climate disruption, while
the president is actively working to speed up our collision with the biggest
existential threat facing every American."
Ahead of the administration's
letter on Monday, Jean Su, energy director with the Center for Biological
Diversity's (CBD) Climate Law Institute, said in
a statement that "Trump can run from the Paris agreement, but he can't
hide from the climate crisis."
"The silver lining is,
Trump's Paris withdrawal will give the global community a break from his
bullying support for fossil fuels," said Su. "But the next president
will need to rejoin the accord immediately and commit to the rapid, wholescale
clean-energy transformation the climate emergency demands."
The yearlong process means the
U.S. withdrawal would take effect after the next presidential election—meaning
that if someone other than Trump wins the White House in 2020, that president
could return to the deal within 30 days.
"America is the number
one historical contributor to the climate emergency wreaking havoc in burning
California, the flooded Southeast, and the rest of the world," Su added.
"The next president must repay this extraordinary climate debt by rapidly
moving America to 100 percent clean energy and financing the decarbonization of
the Global South."
Karen Orenstein, Friends of
the Earth's deputy director of economic policy, concurred in a statement
Monday.
"World leaders must not
wait for Trump, and must not use his moral bankruptcy as an excuse for
inaction," she said. "The rest of the world must implement the Paris
agreement without the United States."
"However, rich countries
must take the threat caused by climate change far more seriously and make their
mitigation and climate finance commitments commensurate with what climate
science and justice demand," Orenstein added. "When the U.S. has more
sane leadership and rejoins the international community, the Paris agreement
needs to be substantially more equitable and ambitious."
With the administration's
withdrawal, "Donald Trump is sending a signal to the world that there will
be no leadership from the U.S. federal government on the climate crisis—a
catastrophic message in a moment of great urgency," 350.org executive
director May Boeve said Monday.
The group's North America
director, Tamara Toles O'Laughlin, said that "Trump is torching our future
so fossil fuel billionaires can pull a profit while the rest of us pay the
price."
"When Trump first said
he'd quit Paris, our message was for elected officials and decision-makers to
pledge 'we are still in,' and double down on commitments for climate
action," she added. "That's still our expectation of all global
officials: to heed demands of the people for transformative climate
action."
Given the Trump
administration's intentions for this particular deal and broader record on
climate issues, O'Laughlin emphasized the importance of state and city
governments in the United States taking action "beyond the commitments of
the Paris agreement," which some activists and experts criticize for not
being bold enough.
Trump and his appointees
have worked
tirelessly to roll back and weaken key environmental and climate
policies implemented by his predecessors. Meanwhile, said Boeve, "a
majority of people in the United States understand the need to address this
crisis head-on."
"There's dangerous
regression from the Trump administration," she explained, "but there
is plenty of leadership everywhere else: young people leading with great
courage; the 7.6 million people who joined the Global Climate Strikes; wise investors
shifting trillions of dollars out of coal, oil, gas companies; liability in
courtrooms, and tribunals as the likes of Exxon are called to pay for the harm
they've caused; and more. The moral outrage at this decision will be a powerful
catalyst for action."
Youth-led climate strikes in
September bookended the U.N.
Climate Action Summit in New York City. Campaigners are
organizing another pair of strikes for Nov. 29 and Dec. 6, timed to
line up with COP25. At the global climate conference—which was recently moved
from Santiago,
Chile to Madrid,
Spain—world leaders will discuss their commitments under the Paris accord.
Katie Eder is the 19-year-old
executive director of Future Coalition, one of the youth groups involved with
planning the climate strikes.
"Trump has made it clear
that he is going to continue to put the wants of large corporations and fossil
fuel executives above the lives and futures of our generation," Eder said Monday.
"We're asking that elected officials at all levels maintain commitments to
the Paris climate agreement and end the fossil fuel era once and for all. We
will continue to strike, rally, and march so that elected officials hear that
message. And come November, if they don't listen, we are prepared to vote them
out."
Before the September strikes,
the Youth Climate Strike Coalition released its
five policy demands: respect for Indigenous land, environmental justice,
protecting biodiversity, the implementation of sustainable agriculture, and a
Green New Deal.
"The demand for climate
action cannot be ignored, and Trump's neglect of the will of the people won't
change that," concluded Toles O'Laughlin of 350.org. "Beyond the
Paris climate agreement, we're not going to stop until we get a Green New Deal
that ends fossil fuels and makes the industry pay for care and repair,
prioritizing frontline communities and workers in the transition."
Meyer of UCS noted that
"fortunately, no other country is following President Trump out the door
on Paris, and here at home, states, cities, and businesses representing more
than half of the U.S. GDP and population have committed to take action to meet
the Paris agreement's goals."
"Unlike the
president," he said, "these leaders understand that reducing
emissions creates jobs and protects local communities, while it is inaction on
climate that poses the real threat to prosperity."
Bernie Sanders Says Apple's $2.5 Billion Home Loan Program a Distraction From Hundreds of Billions in Tax Avoidance That Created California Housing Crisis
"We cannot rely on
corporate tax evaders to solve California's housing crisis."
Monday, November 04, 2019
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday
sharply criticized an announcement from tech giant Apple that the company
would invest $2.5
billion in helping to asssuage the effects of California's housing crisis—a
crisis that Apple has contributed to by driving prices up as the company has
expanded in the San Francisco area.
"Apple's announcement
that it is entering the real estate lending business is an effort to distract
from the fact that it has helped create California's housing crisis—all while
raking in $800 million of taxpayer subsidies, and keeping a quarter
trillion dollars of profit offshore, in order to avoid paying billions of
dollars in taxes," Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for
president in 2020, said in a statement.
"Bernie Sanders comes out
swinging on Apple's housing announcement," tweeted ReCode reporter Teddy
Schleifer.
"Bernie is the first 2020
candidate I've seen to weigh in on this," added Schleifer.
Sanders, in his statement,
said that relying on company's like Apple to solve the issue is not a
solution—no matter how much money the tech giant is throwing at the problem.
"Today, more than 134,000
Californians are homeless and renters need to earn $34.69 per hour to afford
the average two-bedroom apartment," said Sanders. "We cannot rely on
corporate tax evaders to solve California's housing crisis."
As Common Dreams reported,
Sanders unveiled his "Housing for All"
plan in September, promoting an end to homelessness, national rent control, and
the construction of 10 million new homes.
The senator referred to the
plan on Monday, promising Apple that it would contribute to solving the issue,
though perhaps not in the way the company had in mind. The proposal calls for
$2.5 trillion in spending over the next decade—which would "be fully paid
for by establishing a tax on the wealthiest top one-tenth of one percent of
Americans," according to the Sanders campaign.
"When we defeat Donald
Trump, we are going to make companies like Apple start paying their fair share,
so that we can finally start making massive long-term investments that
guarantee Americans affordable housing," said Sanders.
Report Shows How World's Top Capitalists Driving Humanity 'Head-On Into' Global Climate Emergency
The world's leading asset
managers, with trillions of dollars under their direction, continue to vote
down efforts to address the crisis.
Monday, November 04, 2019
A "striking"
report published Monday by the U.K.-based charity ShareAction exposes how the
largest U.S. asset managers are "overwhelmingly"
stalling corporate efforts to tackle the climate crisis despite those
companies' public proclamations and the growing demands for bold action from
people around the world.
ShareAction promotes "responsible
investment." According to the new report (pdf),
the group's "vision is a world where ordinary savers and institutional
investors work together to ensure our communities and environment are safe and
sustainable for all."
As the report—entitled Voting
Matters: Are Asset Managers Using Their Proxy Votes for Climate Action?—explains:
Investors have a key role to
play in helping avert dangerous climate change. One way they can do so is by
using their proxy voting rights. Proxy voting is the primary means by which
shareholders can exert influence over their investee companies and exert
stewardship... Yet, this stewardship tool is often underused by investors. This
year, the directors of BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Total were all
(re-)elected with on average 97% support from shareholders, despite these
companies being some of the largest emitting companies on earth and lacking
plans to transition to a well-below 2°C world.
Voting Matters analyzes
how 57 of the world's largest asset managers have voted on 65 recent
shareholder resolutions that covered topics including "climate-related
disclosures, companies' lobbying activities, and the setting of targets aligned
with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement."
ShareAction researchers found
that "U.S. asset managers are clear laggards in terms of proxy voting on
climate, whilst European asset managers lead the way." The top 10 worst
performers overall are based in the United States; even the report's highest
ranked U.S. managers score lower than those in Europe and the rest of the
world.
"These results are highly
concerning," Voting Matters says, "as the 20 largest U.S.
fund managers control about 35% of global assets under management (AUM), more
than double the 14% run by the top 20 European players."
The worst performers overall
are Capital Group, T. Rowe Price, Blackrock and J.P. Morgan—which are tied for
third—Vanguard Asset Management, Fidelity Management and Research Co.,
Wellington Management International, Franklin Templeton, Northern Trust, State
Street Global Advisors, and MetLife Investment Management.
"Six out of 10 of the
worst performers have come out in support of the Taskforce for Climate-related
Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and joined at least one investor engagement
initiative on climate change," the report notes, "yet fail to vote in
favor of resolutions on climate-related disclosures."
The report's author, ShareAction
campaign manager Jeanne Martin, said in a statement Monday that "you can't
boast climate-awareness in public and block climate goals in private."
"Ultimately, these
investors will be judged on their voting, which is the most powerful tool at
their disposal," Martin added. "They have the power to put the brakes
on the climate emergency, but they're on auto-pilot, driving us head-on into
it. We hope their clients take note of these findings which separate out those
who are really walking the walk on climate change."
Martin, in a series of tweets
Monday, outlined some of the report's key findings, including how fund managers
are responding to the more than 50 investor initiatives that aim to compel and
support investor activity on the climate crisis, such as the Climate Action
100+ (CA100+) Initiative, a global coalition that
pushes some of the world's highest emitting companies to pursue climate action.
Highlighting ShareAction's
recommendations for asset owners, Martin concluded that "as stewards of
capital for millions of beneficiaries, asset owners have a duty to monitor the
engagement activities and proxy voting records of their asset managers."
The report notes that
"the last few years have seen a shift in investors' attitudes towards
climate change." For example, "1,118 institutions representing
US$11.48 trillion in assets and more than 58,000 individual representing US$5.2
billion have committed to divest from fossil fuels."
For those figures, Voting
Matters cites Fossil Free, a
project of the global environmental group 350.org. DivestInvest and
350.org detailed the
divestment movement's successes in September with a report—released just ahead
of the Financing the Future summit in Cape Town—that celebrated surpassing the
$11 trillion milestone.
"What began as a moral
call to action by students is now a mainstream financial response to growing
climate risk to portfolios, the people, and the planet," the September
report said. "The momentum has been driven by a people-powered grassroots
movement, ordinary people on every continent pushing their local institutions
to take a stand against the fossil fuel industry and for a world powered by 100
percent renewable energy."
Naomi Klein and Youth Environmental Leaders to Join Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez in Iowa for Climate Crisis Summit
"We've never seen
something like this in U.S. history. In 2020, Green New Deal voters could
determine who wins the Iowa caucuses, and from there the presidency."
Monday, November 04, 2019
Author and environmentalist
Naomi Klein, U.S. Youth Climate Strike co-founder Isra Hirsi, and Sunrise
Movement leader Zina Precht-Rodriguez are among those slated to join Sen.
Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Iowa on Saturday for a "Climate
Crisis Summit" focused on the urgent need for a Green New Deal.
"The climate crisis is an
international challenge and we are ready to take it on with a Green New
Deal," Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, said Monday in
a tweet promoting
the summit, which is set
to take place at Drake University in Des Moines.
The event, as Vox reported Monday,
is part of the Sanders campaign's push to win the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses with an
ambitious climate message and policy platform. In August, Sanders unveiled
a sweeping
Green New Deal proposal calling for a 10-year mobilization to transition
the U.S. economy to 100 percent renewable energy while creating 20 million
decent-paying union jobs in the process.
"Sen. Bernie Sanders
wants to be the new climate candidate of the 2020 presidential race—and his
campaign is betting it can win them Iowa," Vox reported Monday.
The youth-led Sunrise Movement
tweeted in response to Vox's story that the country has "never seen
something like this."
"In 2020, Green New Deal
voters could determine who wins the Iowa caucuses, and from there the
presidency," the group said.
The Sanders campaign said in a
statement that the summit on Saturday "is set to be one of the largest
gatherings in Iowa to confront climate change." The event will feature
national climate leaders like Hirsi and Precht-Rodriguez as well as local Iowa
activists.
"Sen. Sanders probably
has the most intensive climate plan on the circuit right now," Hirsi
told Vox. "I think a lot of young people are hearing Sanders' message
and waking up."
"The climate crisis is
everything," Hirsi added. "It's healthcare, it's racial justice, it's
criminal justice—everything. It's our lives on the line; lives are already
being lost because of it."
The day after the Climate
Crisis Summit, Sanders plans to go on a "Green Jobs Tour" across
Iowa's conservative fourth congressional district.
Bill Neidhardt, the Sanders
campaign's deputy state director in Iowa, predicted the Vermont senator's bold
climate message will have broad appeal among Iowa voters.
"Climate is typically
seen as an issue for young voters but we reject the notion that climate only
engages young voters," Neidhardt told Vox. "We think a strong
focus on climate, especially on the economic issues, can really turn the
tide."
Engineers develop a new way to remove carbon dioxide from air
The process could work on the
gas at any concentrations, from power plant emissions to open air
October 25, 2019
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
A new way of removing carbon
dioxide from a stream of air could provide a significant tool in the battle
against climate change. The new system can work on the gas at virtually any
concentration level, even down to the roughly 400 parts per million currently
found in the atmosphere.
A new way of removing carbon
dioxide from a stream of air could provide a significant tool in the battle
against climate change. The new system can work on the gas at virtually any
concentration level, even down to the roughly 400 parts per million currently
found in the atmosphere.
Most methods of removing
carbon dioxide from a stream of gas require higher concentrations, such as
those found in the flue emissions from fossil fuel-based power plants. A few
variations have been developed that can work with the low concentrations found in
air, but the new method is significantly less energy-intensive and expensive,
the researchers say.
The technique, based on
passing air through a stack of charged electrochemical plates, is described in
a new paper in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, by MIT
postdoc Sahag Voskian, who developed the work during his PhD, and T. Alan
Hatton, the Ralph Landau Professor of Chemical Engineering.
The device is essentially a
large, specialized battery that absorbs carbon dioxide from the air (or other
gas stream) passing over its electrodes as it is being charged up, and then
releases the gas as it is being discharged. In operation, the device would
simply alternate between charging and discharging, with fresh air or feed gas
being blown through the system during the charging cycle, and then the pure,
concentrated carbon dioxide being blown out during the discharging.
As the battery charges, an
electrochemical reaction takes place at the surface of each of a stack of
electrodes. These are coated with a compound called polyanthraquinone, which is
composited with carbon nanotubes. The electrodes have a natural affinity for
carbon dioxide and readily react with its molecules in the airstream or feed
gas, even when it is present at very low concentrations. The reverse reaction
takes place when the battery is discharged -- during which the device can
provide part of the power needed for the whole system -- and in the process
ejects a stream of pure carbon dioxide. The whole system operates at room
temperature and normal air pressure.
"The greatest advantage
of this technology over most other carbon capture or carbon absorbing
technologies is the binary nature of the adsorbent's affinity to carbon
dioxide," explains Voskian. In other words, the electrode material, by its
nature, "has either a high affinity or no affinity whatsoever,"
depending on the battery's state of charging or discharging. Other reactions
used for carbon capture require intermediate chemical processing steps or the
input of significant energy such as heat, or pressure differences.
"This binary affinity
allows capture of carbon dioxide from any concentration, including 400 parts
per million, and allows its release into any carrier stream, including 100
percent CO2," Voskian says. That is, as any gas flows through the stack of
these flat electrochemical cells, during the release step the captured carbon
dioxide will be carried along with it. For example, if the desired end-product
is pure carbon dioxide to be used in the carbonation of beverages, then a
stream of the pure gas can be blown through the plates. The captured gas is
then released from the plates and joins the stream.
In some soft-drink bottling
plants, fossil fuel is burned to generate the carbon dioxide needed to give the
drinks their fizz. Similarly, some farmers burn natural gas to produce carbon
dioxide to feed their plants in greenhouses. The new system could eliminate
that need for fossil fuels in these applications, and in the process actually
be taking the greenhouse gas right out of the air, Voskian says. Alternatively,
the pure carbon dioxide stream could be compressed and injected underground for
long-term disposal, or even made into fuel through a series of chemical and
electrochemical processes.
The process this system uses
for capturing and releasing carbon dioxide "is revolutionary" he
says. "All of this is at ambient conditions -- there's no need for
thermal, pressure, or chemical input. It's just these very thin sheets, with
both surfaces active, that can be stacked in a box and connected to a source of
electricity."
"In my laboratories, we
have been striving to develop new technologies to tackle a range of
environmental issues that avoid the need for thermal energy sources, changes in
system pressure, or addition of chemicals to complete the separation and
release cycles," Hatton says. "This carbon dioxide capture technology
is a clear demonstration of the power of electrochemical approaches that
require only small swings in voltage to drive the separations."
In a working plant -- for
example, in a power plant where exhaust gas is being produced continuously --
two sets of such stacks of the electrochemical cells could be set up side by
side to operate in parallel, with flue gas being directed first at one set for
carbon capture, then diverted to the second set while the first set goes into
its discharge cycle. By alternating back and forth, the system could always be
both capturing and discharging the gas. In the lab, the team has proven the
system can withstand at least 7,000 charging-discharging cycles, with a 30
percent loss in efficiency over that time. The researchers estimate that they
can readily improve that to 20,000 to 50,000 cycles.
The electrodes themselves can
be manufactured by standard chemical processing methods. While today this is
done in a laboratory setting, it can be adapted so that ultimately they could
be made in large quantities through a roll-to-roll manufacturing process
similar to a newspaper printing press, Voskian says. "We have developed
very cost-effective techniques," he says, estimating that it could be
produced for something like tens of dollars per square meter of electrode.
Compared to other existing
carbon capture technologies, this system is quite energy efficient, using about
one gigajoule of energy per ton of carbon dioxide captured, consistently. Other
existing methods have energy consumption which vary between 1 to 10 gigajoules
per ton, depending on the inlet carbon dioxide concentration, Voskian says.
The researchers have set up a
company called Verdox to commercialize the process, and hope to develop a
pilot-scale plant within the next few years, he says. And the system is very
easy to scale up, he says: "If you want more capacity, you just need to
make more electrodes."
Story Source:
Materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Original written by David L. Chandler. Note: Content may
be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
Sahag Voskian, T. Alan
Hatton. Faradaic electro-swing reactive adsorption for CO2 capture. Energy
& Environmental Science, 2019; DOI: 10.1039/C9EE02412C
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