Veto aside, the Obama administration still might find Keystone XL is in the national interest, once the Department of State completes its six-years-and-counting review. Approval appears to hinge on whether the pipeline is judged to “significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution,” as the president put it in a speech in 2013. State has said no it won’t in the past, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, among others, say yes it will.
There is also little doubt that tar sands oil will find other ways out, whether other pipelines or by truck, railcar or barge. How much or how little depends on future oil price speculation, Canadian geopolitics and the inner machinations of oil companies. But there is little doubt that without Keystone XL, less tar sands oil will find its way out of the ground and, perhaps more importantly, will not be as cheap—and in a time of low oil prices that may prove to be the difference.
Already, projects to mine more tar sands have been put on hold as the global price of oil approaches the cost of producing it from the sands. Canada-based Cenovus Energy as well as petroleum giants Shell, Total and others have all shelved planned developments in Alberta.
Still, the tar sands juggernaut rolls on like the giant trucks used to mine the stuff via existing projects, such as the North Steepbank mine or the Christina Lake Project, tomelt out bitumen with steam. The Canadian government has proved more than willing to subsidize development of the oil sands in the face of low oil prices historically. Keystone XL is also just one pipeline and, as the president has also said time and time again, a nation’s energy strategy hinges on more than just one pipeline. That goes double for the globe: stopping a coal mine in Australia or limiting U.S. coal exports can do more to slow the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide than stopping Keystone XL.
The goal is a shift away from more polluting sources of energy—oil, coal and even natural gas—toward those that add less CO2 to the atmosphere like renewables, nuclear or even fossil fuel–fired power plants outfitted with technology to capture and get rid of global warming pollution. Every bit of infrastructure must be accounted for in some kind of global ledger as either adding more or adding less CO2 while in use. Such energy transitions take decades but there are obvious swaps, like substituting anything for coal or using less of the tar sands.
A glimpse of the ultimate challenge can be seen right now, in low oil prices. Low cost encourages more use, which in turn results in more pollution. As alternatives to fossil fuels grow, coal, oil and natural gas will likely become cheaper as demand shrinks, in turn tempting us to burn more again. To prevent catastrophic climate change, that carbon conundrum will need to be solved.
Journalism tends to be a rear-view mirror. We prefer to deal with what has happened, not what lies ahead. We favour what is exceptional and in full view over what is ordinary and hidden.
Famously, as a tribe, we are more interested in the man who bites a dog than the other way round. But even when a dog does plant its teeth in a man, there is at least something new to report, even if it is not very remarkable or important.
There may be other extraordinary and significant things happening – but they may be occurring too slowly or invisibly for the impatient tick-tock of the newsroom or to snatch the attention of a harassed reader on the way to work.
What is even more complex: there may be things that have yet to happen – stuff that cannot even be described as news on the grounds that news is stuff that has already happened. If it is not yet news – if it is in the realm of prediction, speculation and uncertainty – it is difficult for a news editor to cope with. Not her job.
Alan Rusbridger. Photograph: Graeme Robertson FacebookTwitterPinterest
For these, and other, reasons changes to the Earth’s climate rarely make it to the top of the news list. The changes may be happening too fast for human comfort, but they happen too slowly for the newsmakers – and, to be fair, for most readers.
These events that have yet to materialise may dwarf anything journalists have had to cover over the past troubled century. There may be untold catastrophes, famines, floods, droughts, wars, migrations and sufferings just around the corner. But that is futurology, not news, so it is not going to force itself on any front page any time soon.
Even when the overwhelming majority of scientists wave a big red flag in the air, they tend to be ignored. Is this new warning too similar to the last? Is it all too frightening to contemplate? Is a collective shrug of fatalism the only rational response?
The climate threat features very prominently on the home page of the Guardian on Friday even though nothing exceptional happened on this day. It will be there again next week and the week after. You will, I hope, be reading a lot about our climate over the coming weeks.
One reason for this is personal. This summer I am stepping down after 20 years of editing the Guardian. Over Christmas I tried to anticipate whether I would have any regrets once I no longer had the leadership of this extraordinary agent of reporting, argument, investigation, questioning and advocacy.
Very few regrets, I thought, except this one: that we had not done justice to this huge, overshadowing, overwhelming issue of how climate change will probably, within the lifetime of our children, cause untold havoc and stress to our species.
So, in the time left to me as editor, I thought I would try to harness the Guardian’s best resources to describe what is happening and what – if we do nothing – is almost certain to occur, a future that one distinguished scientist has termedas “incompatible with any reasonable characterisation of an organised, equitable and civilised global community”.
It is not that the Guardian has not ploughed considerable time, effort, knowledge, talent and money into reporting this story over many years. Four million unique visitors a month now come to the Guardian for our environmental coverage – provided, at its peak, by a team including seven environmental correspondents and editors as well as a team of 28 external specialists.
They, along with our science team, have done a wonderful job of writing about the changes to our atmosphere, oceans, ice caps, forests, food, coral reefs and species.
For the purposes of our coming coverage, we will assume that the scientific consensus about man-made climate change and its likely effects is overwhelming. We will leave the skeptics and deniers to waste their time challenging the science. The mainstream argument has moved on to the politics and economics.
The coming debate is about two things: what governments can do to attempt to regulate, or otherwise stave off, the now predictably terrifying consequences of global warming beyond 2C by the end of the century. And how we can prevent the states and corporations which own the planet’s remaining reserves of coal, gas and oil from ever being allowed to dig most of it up. We need to keep them in the ground.
An oil field in North Dakota, US. Photograph: Les Stone/Les Stone/Corbis FacebookTwitterPinterest
There are three really simple numbers which explain this (and if you have even more appetite for the subject, read the excellent July 2012 Rolling Stone piece by the author and campaigner Bill McKibben, which – building on the work of the Carbon Tracker Initiative – first spelled them out).
2C: There is overwhelming agreement – from governments, corporations, NGOs, banks, scientists, you name it – that a rise in temperatures of more than 2C by the end of the century would lead to disastrous consequences for any kind of recognised global order.
565 gigatons: “Scientists estimate that humans can pour roughly 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by mid-century and still have some reasonable hope of staying below 2C,” is how McKibben crisply puts it. Few dispute that this idea of a global “carbon budget” is broadly right.
2,795 gigatons: This is the amount of carbon contained in the proven coal, oil and gas reserves of fossil fuel companies and states – ie the fuel we are planning to extract and burn.
You do not need much of a grasp of maths to work out the implications. There are trillions of dollars worth of fossil fuels currently underground which, for our safety, simply cannot be extracted and burned. All else is up for debate: that much is not.
We need to keep it in the ground. This was the starting point for the group of journalists who met early in January to start considering how we would cover the issue.
But how?
Some will make the case for governmental action. Within nine months, the nations of the world will assemble in Paris, as they did previously in Copenhagen and Kyoto and numerous other summits now forgotten. Can they find the right actions and words, where they have failed before? It is certainly important that they feel the pressure to achieve real change.
It is now very much on the radar of the financial director rather than the social responsibility department. If most of these reserves are unburnable, they are asking, then what does that say about the true value of carbon-dependent companies? It is a question of fiduciary responsibility as much as a moral imperative.
We will look at who is getting the subsidies and who is doing the lobbying. We will name the worst polluters and find out who still funds them. We will urge enlightened trusts, investment specialists, universities, pension funds and businesses to take their money away from the companies posing the biggest risk to us. And, because people are rightly bound to ask, we will report on how the Guardian Media Group itself is getting to grips with the issues.
In addition to words, images and films, we will be podcasting the series as we go along, to give some insight and transparency about our reporting and how we are framing and developing it.
We begin on Friday and on Monday with two extracts from the introduction to Naomi Klein’s recent book, This Changes Everything. This has been chosen because it combines sweep, science, politics, economics, urgency and humanity. Antony Gormley, who has taken a deep interest in the climate threat, has contributed two artworks from his collection that have not been exhibited before – the first of many artists with whom we hope to collaborate over coming weeks.
Where does this leave you? I hope not feeling impotent and fearful.
Some of you may be marching in London on Saturday 7 March. As McKibben will argue next week, the fight for change is also full of opportunity and optimism. And we hope that many readers will find inspiration in our series to make their own contribution by applying pressure on their workplace, or pension fund, to move.
But, most of all, please read what we write. Real change can only follow from citizens informing themselves and applying pressure. To quote McKibben: “This fight, as it took me too long to figure out, was never going to be settled on the grounds of justice or reason. We won the argument, but that didn’t matter: like most fights it was, and is, about power.” SOURCE
The European Union has become the second party to submit its pledge for a global climate agreement to the UN.
On Friday environment ministers approved the bloc’s intended nationally determined contribution (INDC), which targets greenhouse gas cuts of “at least” 40% on 1990 levels by 2030.
Details of the submission, published on the European Commission website, say it is in line with global emission cuts of 60% on 2010 levels by 2050.
The EC said this was “at the upper end of the IPCC’s [UN climate science panel] range of 40-70% reductions necessary to achieve the below 2C target.”
In a statement European climate commissioner Miguel Arias Canete said the submission was “ambitious and timely”.
“I now call on all our partners, especially major and emerging economies, to come forward in time and at least match our level of ambition,” he said.
This week Canete told RTCC that the pledge to cut emissions by “at least 40%” would not be achieved by changing how the EU accounted for major carbon sinks like forests, which absorb CO2.
An earlier proposal from the Commission indicated it could use offsets to achieve the 40% goal, which met stiff criticism from NGOs and the UK government.
Road to Paris
The EU’s submission comes after Switzerland released its commitment to a proposed global climate pact, aiming for 50% carbon cuts on 1990 levels by 2030.
All major economies are expected to deliver their INDCs to the UN by October 1 so it can assess if they will be enough to prevent warming of above 2C, a level deemed dangerous and one governments have agreed to avoid.
But while the speed of the EU’s announcement was broadly welcomed, some observers expressed disappointment the pledge did not offer more assurances on climate finance to developing countries, or offer support for a climate compensation mechanism.
“How can we adapt to climate change impacts without a commitment on finance? How can African governments scale up their climate action if they don’t know what finance and technology is available to them,” said Azeb Girmai from LDC-Watch in Addis Abba.
Philippine climate campaigner Lidy Nacpil said the EU should have aimed for tougher carbon cuts, accusing Brussels of ignoring “our lives and our rights.”
“The science is very clear that such weak targets, combined with the ongoing use of discredited carbon markets, means we are not on track to tackle the climate crisis, and that the EU is now complicit in committing us to further destruction,” she said.
Analysts at the Carbon Pulse website said European plans to meet its goals through its struggling emissions trading scheme would likely be further undermined after the release of free pollution permits worth “hundreds of millions of euros” to major businesses. SOURCE
A team compiling lists of on-reserve natives who’ll volunteer to be on jury rolls for inquests probing the deaths of aboriginals in Thunder Bay and Kenora, has so far gathered 340 names.
Alvin Fiddler, deputy grand chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, called the 340 volunteers “a great success’’ so far. CARLOS OSORIO / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO
By Donovan Vincent, reposted from the Toronto Star, Mar 5, 2015
A team compiling lists of on-reserve natives who’ll volunteer to be on jury rolls for inquests probing the deaths of aboriginals in Thunder Bay and Kenora, has so far gathered 340 names.
The team, which includes, lawyers, a family counsellor and members of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN), which represents First Nations groups in northern Ontario, has been fanning out to northern Ontario reserves since November as part of a government-funded initiative aimed at reducing the problem of low aboriginal participation on juries.
The problem is so acute that it prompted Dr. Dirk Huyer, Ontario’s chief coroner, to last year halt 12 long-delayed inquests probing the deaths of natives in the Thunder Bay and Kenora areas.
One of the inquests is looking into seven young people who died since 2000.
A new time-limited regulation recently passed by the provincial government now permits on-reserve aboriginals in Thunder Bay and Kenora to volunteer to be on jury rolls for inquests in these areas.
With the regulation in place and the volunteer lists being compiled, the inquests can now proceed, Huyer told the Star recently.
Alvin Fiddler, deputy grand chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation and a member of the team gathering the list of names, called the 340 volunteers “a great success’’ so far.
He cited the example of the team’s visit Monday to Bearskin Lake reserve near Kenora. The on-reserve population there is about 460 people, and the team managed to gather 41 volunteers.
“The collaborative nature of the project, both NAN and the provincial government working on this, I think is paying huge dividends for both sides,’’ Fiddler said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
Huyer says the goal is to have a “regular’’ list of names for inquest jury rolls for Thunder Bay and Kenora, and then a supplementary roll of volunteer on-reserve natives.
Kenora and Thunder Bay have large numbers of aboriginal populations, so the aim is to have rolls that more proportionately represent these communities.
Fiddler said he and the others on the team are aiming to complete their work by the end of this month, and then the list of volunteers will be made available to the provincial government and chief coroner.
Huyer says the volunteer list won’t necessarily guarantee that aboriginal people will be on the final five-person jury panels that will sit in court to hear inquests.
Jurors on the rolls will still be screened for things like bias, and relationship or professional connections to the dead.
The idea of having volunteers for inquest jury rolls was first put forward in 2013 by former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci in his ground-breaking report, “First Nations Representation on Ontario Juries.”
The inquest into the seven young native people who died since 2000, Reggie Bushie, Jethro Anderson, Jordan Wabasse, all 15 years old, along with Kyle Morriseau, 17, Curran Strang and Robyn Harper, both 18, and Paul Panacheese, 21 — all but two by drowning — was called after a Star investigation looked into the lack of investigation into their deaths.
Many of them had to leave their remote reserves in northern Ontario to attend high school in Thunder Bay.
Huyer says this large inquest will hopefully take place sometime in late fall. SOURCE
