World governments are likely to recoil from plans for an ambitious 2015 climate change deal at talks next week, concern over economic growth at least partially eclipsing scientists’ warnings of rising temperatures and water levels. Many governments, especially in Europe, are concerned that climate policies, such as generous support schemes for solar energy, push up consumer energy bills. Emerging economies such as China and India, heavily reliant on cheap, high-polluting coal to end poverty, are reluctant to take the lead despite rising emissions and pollution that are choking cities. --Alister Doyle and Nina Chestney,
Reuters, 7 November 2013
AUSTRALIA will be represented by a diplomat rather than a senior minister at international climate talks in Poland next week aimed at securing an agreement to cut global carbon emissions. Environment Minister Greg Hunt won't attend annual United Nations climate change talks in Warsaw, saying he'll be busy repealing the carbon tax in the first fortnight of parliament. Mr Hunt said through a spokesman that he would be “fully engaged in repealing the carbon tax” while the conference was underway. --Ben Packham,
The Australian, 7 November 2013
The European Union's Climate Commissioner has urged countries to ensure next week's climate summit in Poland is not undermined by a push by Russia for radical changes to the long-running negotiations' decision-making processes. The Commissioner's comments follow a recent letter from Russia to the UN's Climate Change Secretariat, calling for radical changes to the way it hosts climate change summits. The letter is the latest episode in an ongoing row over the extension of the Kyoto Protocol, which has seen a small group of "like minded countries" including Russia, Belarus and Ukraine complain that the agreement finalised at last year's Doha Summit was passed without their proper approval, effectively forcing them into a commitment to reduce emissions. --Jessica Shankleman,
Business Green, 6 November 2013
A senior Chinese official on Tuesday urged developed countries to keep their commitments on climate financing. At the COP15 meeting in Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries promised to mobilise 100 billion dollars per year by 2020 in order to address climate change. --
The BRICS Post, 5 November 2013
In a move that will put India at odds with both developing and least developed countries at the upcoming climate change conference, Delhi plans to take a strong line, putting the onus of preventing climate change on the industrialised countries. In a clear indication that India would mount a concerted effort to put industrialised countries on the mat over the issue of climate finance, New Delhi has expressed serious concern over the lack of money in the Green Climate Fund, as well as the absence of a roadmap for raising $100 billion every year for climate finance from 2020. --Urmi A Goswami,
Economic Times of India, 7 November 2013
Germany, Europe’s biggest power market, is poised to open its first new coal-fired plants in eight years, just as prices slump because of a glut of electricity. Chancellor Angela Merkel, who before the Sept. 22 election said revising the nation’s renewable energy law was her first priority, plans to shut Germany’s nine nuclear reactors within a decade, replacing the round-the-clock output with intermittent solar and wind plants. Even as the $757-billion energy shift boosts renewable power output to 35 percent of total supply by 2020, from 23 percent now, Merkel will be more reliant than ever on fossil fuels to drive Europe’s biggest economy on cloudy and still days. --Julia Mengewein,
Bloomberg, 4 November 2013
The drive to renewables in Germany should run counter to maintaining a high dependency on coal, but (and some may say hypocritically) Germany has five new coal-fired power plants with a combined capacity of around 4 GW going through their “first fire” trials this summer. Overall, Germany’s coal-fired power plants (including lignite) contributed more than 50% to the nation’s electricity demand in the first half of this year, with more coal-fired capacity likely to be commissioned before the first nuclear plant is taken out of service in 2015. --Stuart Burns,
Metal Miner, 22 October 2013
Poland will suspend passport-free movement at its EU borders for the period November 8–23 in an attempt to prevent disruption to the Warsaw Climate Conference taking place in November. Reintroducing border checks for a short period is allowed under Article 2.2 of the Schengen Treaty if a government believes there is a threat to “public policy or national security.” --
Krakow Post, 7 November 2013
There is need for a really independent assessment of the interface between science and policy in this most important and contentious subject. In 1868 William Stanley Jevons FRS urged the UK to abandon the Industrial Revolution, as the then addiction to coal was such that when coal ran out (about now) the collapse of the UK would be too terrible to contemplate. With hindsight, Jevons was clearly wrong. Who is to say that the latter-day Jevonses will not be proved wrong? Let us please have the debate in some degree of historical context and before a properly sceptical audience. --Professor Michael Kelly,
The Times, 7 November 2013
