Carbon emission reduction: News and technology

[macdoc]

[Brian Peacock]

[Brian Peacock]

I bet the Dutch are up the top.

Dutch came kind of 2nd behind Denmark (see link). Of interest to Ratz...

UK: 6
France: 25
Switzerland: 33
Finland: 37
Australia: 50
US: 57
Canada: 62

https://ccpi.org/ranking/

[Brian Peacock]

Canada’s new leader culls carbon tax seen as burden on voters

He may be dubbed “Carbon Tax Carney” by his political rivals, but upon becoming Canada’s prime minister last Friday, Mark Carney cancelled the unpopular carbon levy on consumers.

The former governor of the central banks of England and Canada, who has never before held elected office, will lead the world’s second-largest country amid a punishing trade war with Washington and threats from US President Donald Trump to annex Canada.

His first order of business? With the cameras clicking, Carney slashed the carbon tax rate to zero for consumers, effectively ending what had been the governing Liberal Party’s signature climate change policy since its national launch in 2019...

[pErvinalia]

Freedum for the markets!

[Svartalf]

I hope the tariffs make up for the budget loss, it's not like Canada had so much money it can afford to slash resources off like that.

[Brian Peacock]

Freedum for the markets!

Politically, it denudes an opposition attack line and implies a 'clean break' by throwing Trudeau's premiership away. Bet Canadian fossil are thinking their future is safe in his hands too - which will play well in the press. Certainly showing what an elite internationalist he is, which is exactly what Canada needs... apparently.

[Svartalf]

canadian fossils have other trouble than the carbon tax, most of the Alberta stuff goes, or used to, to the USA, except I'm not sure that's going to last with the incipient economic war

[Brian Peacock]

Trump's economic war can't go anywhere but South.

[Svartalf]

its already going deep south, but the USA's buying power is going down with it

[Brian Peacock]

its already going deep south, but the USA's buying power is going down with it

Ha. I meant the global South, but I see what you mean too.

[Brian Peacock]

Tackling climate crisis will increase economic growth, OECD research finds

Taking strong action to tackle the climate crisis will increase countries’ economic growth, rather than damage their finances as critics of net zero policies have claimed, research from the world’s economic watchdog has found.

Setting ambitious targets on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and setting out the policies to achieve them, would result in a net gain to global GDP by the end of the next decade, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in a joint report with the UN Development Programme.

The calculation of the net gain, of 0.23% by 2040, would be even greater in 2050, if it included the benefit of avoiding the devastation that not cutting emissions would wreak on the economy.

By 2050, the most advanced economies would enjoy an increase of 60% in GDP per capita growth, while by the same date lower income countries would experience a 124% rise from 2025 levels.

In the shorter term, there would also be benefits for developing countries, with 175million people lifted out of poverty by the end of the decade, if governments invest in cutting emissions now.

By contrast, a third of global GDP could be lost this century, if the climate crisis were allowed to run unchecked....

And yet...

[Brian Peacock]

The International Maritime Organisation is all at sea over carbon trading. But don't worry. A new golden age of sail is just around the corner.

EU appears to back down on carbon levy on international shipping

The long-awaited carbon levy on international shipping that was to supply vital climate finance looks set to be significantly diluted, after the EU appeared to be backing down in global talks, in a blow to vulnerable countries.

The EU is set to accept a compromise that would allow companies to enter into a system of trading carbon credits instead of paying directly for their emissions, the Guardian has learned.

Campaigners and experts said the move would mean less money for the rescue and rehabilitation of countries stricken by climate disaster and made it less likely that shipping companies would move quickly to decarbonise their fleets.

“This compromise fundamentally ignores the needs of some of the most vulnerable countries,” said Tristan Smith, associate professor in energy and transport at University College London. “There is a better compromise available.”

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the shipping industry produces about 2.2% of global CO2 emissions. Forcing shipowners to pay a small charge for every tonne of carbon dioxide their vessels produce has been touted as a key way to raise some of the hundreds of billions of dollars needed for climate finance.

A proposal for such a levy, which has the support of scores of developing countries, the EU and the UK, is under discussion at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in London, in talks that started last month and resume next week before finishing on 11 April.

But the levy faces fierce opposition from China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and about a dozen other countries that have strong interests in exports or fossil fuels, and argue that it would raise prices for consumers. Some members have argued that a majority vote could push through the levy, but China has made it clear it would not accept such an outcome and has threatened to effectively withdraw from the IMO if the issue was forced...

[pErvinalia]

Let's be honest. Taxes will never be raised again.

[Brian Peacock]

Big banks predict catastrophic warming, with profit potential

Top Wall Street institutions are preparing for a severe future of global warming that blows past the temperature limits agreed to by more than 190 nations a decade ago, industry documents show.

The big banks’ acknowledgment that the world is likely to fail at preventing warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels is spelled out in obscure reports for clients, investors and trade association members. Most were published after the reelection of President Donald Trump, who is seeking to repeal federal policies that support clean energy while turbocharging the production of oil, gas and coal — the main sources of global warming.

The recent reports — from Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and the Institute of International Finance — show that Wall Street has determined the temperature goal is effectively dead and describe how top financial institutions plan to continue operating profitably as temperatures and damages soar.

“We now expect a 3°C world,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote earlier this month, citing “recent setbacks to global decarbonization efforts.”

The stunning conclusion indicates that the bank believes the planet is hurtling toward a future in which severe droughts and harvest failures become widespread, sea-level rise is measured in feet rather than inches and tropical regions experience episodes of extreme heat and humidity for weeks at a time that would bring deadly risks to people who work outdoors.

The global Paris Agreement, from which the U.S. is withdrawing under Trump, aims to limit average temperature increases to well below 2 degrees Celsius. Scientists have warned that permanently exceeding 1.5 degrees — a threshold the world breached for the first time last year — could lead to increasingly severe climate impacts, such as the demise of coral reef ecosystems that hundreds of millions of people rely on for food and storm surge protection.

Morgan Stanley’s climate forecast was tucked into a mundane research report on the future of air conditioning stocks, which it provided to clients on March 17. A 3 degree warming scenario, the analysts determined, could more than double the growth rate of the $235 billion cooling market every year, from 3 percent to 7 percent until 2030...