Climate Change, Carbon Taxes, Decarbonization and ENGOs – Page 29

For Poland’s mining region, coal remains a way of life (France 24.com – December 2, 2018)

December 3, 2018

https://www.france24.com/en/

KNURÓW (POLAND) (AFP) – “It’s a family thing. My father, my grandfather were miners, so I am,” says Arkadiusz Wojcik at a coal mine in the southern Polish town of Knurow. Defying the danger to life and limb of descending into the mine on a daily basis, Poland’s coal miners still pass down the job from father to son.

The occupation may be on its way out in much of the West, but in Poland’s Silesian coal country it is thriving thanks to high wages and support from a government that refuses to decarbonise the economy. In Brussels, Berlin and Paris, coal is the enemy. It produces the carbon dioxide blamed for the planet’s rising temperatures.

In Poland however, coal is a way of life, with no signs of changing. “Here in Silesia, it’s a tradition,” says Wojcik, 36, after working a night shift 650 metres (2,100 feet) underground. The Knurow mine is operational day and night, with the schedule divided into four shifts. But one thing is constant: the risk.

A Climate Summit in the Heart of Coal Country – by Meciej Martewicz and Jeremy Hodges (Bloomberg News – December 2, 2018)

December 3, 2018

https://www.bloomberg.com/

As government officials, scientists, and green activists gather for the United Nations climate conference in Poland, Adam Pietron has a few words of advice: Try to avoid the air. Pietron lives in Katowice, a coal-mining and steel-making stronghold for centuries that’s host to the conclave, and he says the pollution is so bad that this year he installed an air purifier.

“Sometimes the smog is terrible,” Pietron says, consulting an app on his phone that measures air quality. “A few days back, it was tough to breathe.” More than 22,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries are coming to a city as closely tied to the carbon economy as almost anywhere on earth.

Katowice is the capital of Silesia, the heart of the coal industry in the country with Europe’s worst air–mostly due to its continued reliance on the fuel for everything from massive power plants to basement furnaces.

‘Impossible task’? World leaders meeting for high-stakes climate talks – by Frank Jordans and Monika Scislowska (The Associated Press/CTV News – November 28, 2018)

November 29, 2018

https://www.ctvnews.ca/

KATOWICE, Poland — Three years after sealing a landmark global climate deal in Paris, world leaders are gathering again to agree on the fine print.

The euphoria of 2015 has given way to sober realization that getting an agreement among almost 200 countries, each with their own political and economic demands, will be challenging — as evidenced by U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris accord, citing his “America First” mantra.

“Looking from the outside perspective, it’s an impossible task,” Poland’s deputy environment minister, Michal Kurtyka, said of the talks he will preside over in Katowice from Dec. 2-14. Top of the agenda will be finalizing the so-called Paris rulebook, which determines how countries have to count their greenhouse gas emissions, transparently report them to the rest of the world and reveal what they are doing to reduce them.

The World Needs to Quit Coal. Why Is It So Hard? – by Somini Sengupta (New York Times – November 24, 2018)

November 26, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/

HANOI, Vietnam — Coal, the fuel that powered the industrial age, has led the planet to the brink of catastrophic climate change.

Scientists have repeatedly warned of its looming dangers, most recently on Friday, when a major scientific report issued by 13 United States government agencies warned that the damage from climate change could knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end if significant steps aren’t taken to rein in warming.

An October report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on global warming found that avoiding the worst devastation would require a radical transformation of the world economy in just a few years. Central to that transformation: Getting out of coal, and fast.

What’s in a name? With ‘Climate Change,’ a lot of reckless misuse – by Rex Murphy (National Post – November 17, 2018)

November 22, 2018

https://nationalpost.com/

If a rebrand will help the activist cause, who really cares about rigour in the scientific discipline?

One of the more distinguishing aspects of the global warming frenzy is the playful manner in which its adherents approach language. Whenever they feel the need to rearrange the terms of debate, counter the emergence of “inconvenient” facts, or simply put a whole new banner on the crusade, neither shame nor consistency offers any brake to their innovations.

Should the world, the weather, their most central projections “present” in any manner that doesn’t accord with their most pious predispositions, then they simply rename the whole thing. In the beginning it was always the fight against Global Warming — capital G, capital W.

But Global Warming proved an unaccommodating brand. When snow in all its abundant white purity continued to fall where snow was no longer meant to fall, when glaciers failed to move and melt at the speeds Global Warming had promised they would, when temperatures dropped to chilling Antarctic levels in places where Global Warming prophets had projected the growth of palm trees, even the sages of the IPCC realized it was time to change the window display, and put a new face on the failing campaign.

Another report reluctantly admits that ‘green’ energy is a disastrous flop – by Peter Foster (Financial Post – November 22, 2018)

November 22, 2018

https://business.financialpost.com/

This report should be profoundly embarrassing to the government of Justin Trudeau

Amid hundreds of graphs, charts and tables in the latest World Energy Outlook (WEO) released last week by the International Energy Agency, there is one fundamental piece of information that you have to work out for yourself: the percentage of total global primary energy demand provided by wind and solar. The answer is 1.1 per cent. The policy mountains have laboured and brought forth not just a mouse, but — as the report reluctantly acknowledges — an enormously disruptive mouse.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has in recent years become an increasingly schizophrenic organization. As both a source of energy information and a shill for the UN’s climate-focused sustainable development agenda, it has to talk up the “transition to a low-carbon future” while simultaneously reporting that it’s not happening. But it will!

This report should be profoundly embarrassing to the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, which has virtue-signalled itself to the front of a parade that is going nowhere, although it can certainly claim genuine leadership in the more forceful route to transition: killing the fossil fuel industry by edict.

Exclusive: At U.N. climate talks, Trump team plans sideshow on coal – by Timothy Gardner (Reuters U.S. – November 15, 2018)

November 15, 2018

https://www.reuters.com/

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration plans to set up a side-event promoting fossil fuels at the annual U.N. climate talks next month, repeating a strategy that infuriated global-warming activists during last year’s talks, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

As with the 2017 gathering in Bonn, Germany, the administration plans to highlight the benefits of technologies that more efficiently burn fuels including coal, the sources said.

This year’s talks in Katowice, Poland – located in a mining region that is among the most polluted in Europe – are intended to hammer out a rule book to the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, which set a sweeping goal of ending the fossil-fuel era this century by spurring a trillion-dollar transition to cleaner energy sources such as solar and wind power.

NEWS RELEASE: Top scientists, writers and academics sign open letter backing nuclear to tackle climate change

November 5, 2018

OTTAWA, Nov. 5, 2018 /CNW/ – A distinguished and prominent group of Canadians and international men and women today released the text of an Open Letter to Canadians they will publish later this week in support of urgent action to reduce carbon emissions, including the need for next-generation nuclear technology to be part of the mix.

“Despite a vocal but dwindling ‘anti-nuke’ contingent stuck in last century’s political battles,” said David Schumacher, a signatory of the letter and organizer of the initiative, “these innovative nuclear power efforts deserve the support of government, industry, and all Canadians. Without nuclear it is going to be impossible to tackle climate change, so everyone has a stake in the success of these efforts.”

Mr. Schumacher is an Emmy-winning Canadian filmmaker, whose documentary, “The New Fire,” makes the case for next-generation nuclear to battle climate change.

The Open Letter is signed by 25 influential individuals, including prominent Canadians, Frank McKenna, former Canadian Ambassador to the U.S. and former premier of New Brunswick;

Spain to close most coalmines in €250m transition deal – by Arthure Neslen (The Guardian – October 26, 2018)

October 29, 2018

https://www.theguardian.com/

Spain is to shut down most of its coalmines by the end of the year after government and unions struck a deal that will mean €250m (£221m) will be invested in mining regions over the next decade.

Pedro Sánchez’s new leftwing administration has moved quickly on environmental policy, abolishing a controversial “sunshine tax” on the solar industry, and announcing the launch of Spain’s long-delayed national climate plan next month.

Unions hailed the mining deal – which covers Spain’s privately owned pits – as a model agreement. It mixes early retirement schemes for miners over 48, with environmental restoration work in pit communities and re-skilling schemes for cutting-edge green industries.

The art of politically expedient planning in an age of climate ague – by Rex Murphy (National Post – October 27, 2018)

October 29, 2018

https://nationalpost.com/

In the fantastical ambition to change the Earth’s climate, Canada is not even a player. It is at best a ball boy on the court, scampering after fouls

Let us assume you are in St. John’s, N.L., and devise a plan to go to Port aux Basques on the far side of the Island. Your vehicle is an 18-year-old beater, and gets, on a good day, 15 miles to the gallon (unleaded). Your plan calls for taxing — er borrowing a few bucks from your credulous neighbours and buying the gas for the trip from that subscription.

You get 12 bucks, enough for two gallons, and that might, with a wind at your back, get you to Whitbourne, 50 miles from St. John’s, a fine place — great pea soup, with dumplings at Monty’s restaurant and worth the drive. But it’s roughly 500 miles short of Port aux Basques.

And that’s it. That’s your plan. You offer it as a blueprint for other trans-island travellers. Well, it is, technically, a plan. But you’re never going to see Port aux Basque under this plan. Your plan is gallons short of a full tank. You’ve promised a marathon and delivered a sprint.

The Liberals ignored my carbon-tax plan. Theirs is much worse – by Jack Mintz (Financial Post – October 25, 2018)

October 26, 2018

https://business.financialpost.com/

An esteemed colleague of mine showed up in Twitterland on Tuesday to graciously offer me credit for the Liberal government’s carbon-pricing announcement this week. This fellow economist made the link to a 2008 paper I co-authored with Nancy Olewiler, which proposed converting the federal fuel excise tax into a carbon tax in Canada.

While recognition of my past work is always appreciated, I don’t think I can take credit for this Liberal plan. In fact, I am disillusioned with these evolving climate policies that seem to be laid out in a helter-skelter fashion — and with high economic costs.

I stand behind the points of the 2008 paper. I still maintain that a single uniform carbon tax is the least distortionary way to implement carbon policies. And we should integrate existing federal- provincial fuel taxes — for example, almost 25 cents per litre on gasoline in Ontario — by transforming them into general carbon taxes. With a single carbon tax rate, businesses and consumers can determine the best way to respond to reducing emissions.

Report Debunking Trump’s Coal Plan Is Under Review, Administration Says – by Jennifer A. Dlouhy (Bloomberg News – October 15, 2018)

October 15, 2018

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The Trump administration is pushing back against assertions it buried a study that undermines its efforts to prop up coal and nuclear power plants.

The analysis, which was initially ordered up by the Energy Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy last fall and completed earlier this year, is still moving through an internal review process, spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes said.

“It is premature and irresponsible to criticize and jump to politically motivated conclusions about a report that has not yet been finalized or released,” Hynes said by email. The study disputes a key Trump administration argument for preventing the closures of more coal and nuclear power plants: that those facilities are critical in ensuring the nation’s electric grid is resilient because they store their fuel on site.

The UN climate-change panel that cried wolf too often – by Rex Murphy (National Post – October 13, 2018)

October 15, 2018

https://nationalpost.com/

You can’t set multiple deadlines for Doomsday. It’s a kind of one-off by nature. Do it too often and people cease to take notice or even care

Everybody loves the Apocalypse. The idea of the end of the world, the more imminent the better, has always had enthusiastic popular support.

For as long as we’ve enjoyed life on this delightful Earth there has been a morose and righteous sect of one sort or another telling us the lease was nearly up, the doomsday bailiff coming any minute now to shut things down forever. And whether from the abrasive thrill of the message, or the melodrama of the scenario, people have lapped it up.

Indeed there is a whole category of philosophy devoted to that time when the world in flame and fire renders itself into ash, when time stands still, life evaporates into eternity and all is dead and cold. It is impressively called eschatology — the study of The Four Last Things.

Even if carbon taxes are implemented, are electric cars really the best way to go? – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – October 15, 2018)

October 15, 2018

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

A transportation revolution is in the making and bets worth hundreds of billions of dollars are being placed. Who might the winner be? Will it be the Tesla-style electric car, the Toyota-style hybrid or the hydrogen car?

Will personal transportation of the Uber ilk, possibly in self-driving form, replace public transportation as we know it? Might the gasoline engine surprise us all and endure for another 20 years, or even a century?

It’s impossible to know, but we do know the game changed more than a little this week when the United Nations published a frightening report that said the planet is warming at a far faster rate than the climate-change scientists had suspected.

Glencore Emerging A Big Winner From Coal Consolidation – Tim Treadgold (Forbes Magazine – October 12, 2018)

October 12, 2018

https://www.forbes.com/

Tim Treadgold has been writing about the mining and oil industries for more than 40 years.

The inconvenient truth of coal prices which refuse to fall as demanded by environmental activists and some investors and governments is proving to be a rather convenient fact for one of the world’s biggest mining and commodity trading companies, Glencore.

While other big miners have been selling coal assets Glencore has been buying and if recent indications are correct it now controls enough of the seaborne coal market to have a noticeable effect on price.

An example cited in a research report published this week was how Glencore was able to delay settlement in annual coal-price negotiations with Japanese buyers in order to win a higher price.