While Brazil has elected a climate skeptical president, Germany’s ‘climate chancellor’ Angela Merkel has announced that she is gradually stepping down from her political roles.
Green news outlets are voicing concern that these and other developments in the Western world are putting the Paris agreement and the entire climate agenda at risk of falling apart. —GWPF, 31 October 2018
The alliance of rich, emerging and poor economies that sealed the Paris climate deal is falling apart. In many important countries, climate skepticism and economic nationalism are usurping the international green enthusiasm of 2015. –Sara Stefanini, Climate Home News, 31 October 2018
Only sixteen countries out of the 197 that have signed the Paris Agreement have defined national climate action plan ambitious enough to meet their pledges, according to a policy brief released on Monday. The 16 countries are Algeria, Canada, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Japan, FYR Macedonia, Malaysia, Montenegro, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Samoa, Singapore, and Tonga. —EurActiv, 29 October 2018
A fleet of new coal plants in Asia threatening to derail global emissions targets has exposed the growing “disconnect” between energy markets and climate goals. —Financial Times, 31 October 2018
The United Kingdom’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Philip Hammond delivered his Autumn Budget, 2018, on Monday the 29th of October. Although silent on many environmental issues it contains clear indications that the Treasury is persisting in its attempt gradually to introduce technology-neutral carbon taxation to replace income support subsidies to renewables. If successful, this attempt will represent a major and by and large desirable change of direction. —Dr. John Constable: GWPF Energy Editor, 31 October 2018
The head of the energy company that is seeking to become the first in the UK to start commercial fracking for gas has warned the government that its regulatory system risks “strangling” the nascent industry. —Financial Times, 31 October 2018
Last Saturday, BBC Radio 4 ran throughout the day with headline news about the shale-gas company Cuadrilla causing “micro-earthquakes” in Lancashire, as if the ground was trembling. It wasn’t. The tremors from fracturing gas-soaked shale rock more than a mile below the surface, picked up by ultrasensitive sensors, were far too weak to be felt at the surface. They were never going to threaten the integrity of the steel and concrete casing of the gas well itself, as some activists have since claimed. —Matt Ridley, The Times, 31 October 2018
Good news. We need to save civilization from this nonsense. Humanity must remain a teleological force in this universe, we cannot afford to bomb ourselves back to the stone age.