Environment

By Shua Garfield

The World Energy Outlook 2008, released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) on November 12, makes an alarming prediction: Without new government policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and assuming current rates of growth in energy demand continue, global GHG emissions could rise 45% by 2030. The atmospheric GHG concentrations that would result from these emissions would be high enough to cause average global temperatures to eventually rise 6oC above pre-industrial levels. According to Australian government climate change adviser Ross Garnaut, a temperature rise of this magnitude would result in the extinction of 48-100% of all plant and animal species.

By Shua Garfield

The rate of growth in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — 3% between 2006 and 2007 — has exceeded the “worst-case scenario” predictions of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the September 26 Los Angeles Times reported. According to Corinne Le Quere, professor of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey, these emissions levels put the world on track for a global average temperature rise of up to 6.1°C over the next century. According to Australian government climate change adviser Ross Garnaut, a rise of this magnitude and speed would result in the extinction of 48-100% of all plant and animal species.

By Shua Garfield

As the Sun disappeared below the horizon of the North Pole on September 22 — ending the Northern hemisphere’s summer — it left behind the second-lowest minimum level of Arctic summer ice cover since satellite records began 29 years ago. At 4.52 million square kilometres (on September 12), the ice cover area was 2.24 million sq km lower than the 1979-2000 long-term average summer minimum.

By Andrew Martin

The enthusiasm for nuclear power in sections of the ALP that was nurtured during the government of the previous prime minister, John Howard, has not been dampened. If anything, the election of the federal ALP government has led to renewed pressure from powerful pro-nuclear advocates, including within the ALP itself, most notably some officials of the Australian Workers Union (AWU).

By Shua Garfield

“We cannot continue to pour carbon pollution into the atmosphere as if there is no cost … Climate change threatens our food production, agriculture, and water supplies.” With this dire warning, the minister for climate change and water, Senator Penny Wong, released the federal government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme green paper on July 16. However, the proposals outlined in the paper are not a recipe for serious action to avoid the climate change disasters that Wong warns of. Instead, the paper is largely a plan to hand out money to the worst polluters.

By Tim Stewart

Exactly 20 years after his June 23, 1988 testimony to the US Senate, which alerted the public that global warming was underway, Dr James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, offered a sobering deadline — one year — to begin deffusing the “global warming time bomb”.

By Doug Lorimer

Across the globe, working people are facing a disastrous surge in the price of food. Prices for basic staples such as maize, rice, and wheat have more than doubled over the past year. Widespread protests against the growing threat of mass hunger in many underdeveloped countries has raised concerns by the mouthpieces for big business in the rich countries that these protests could explode into mass social rebellions.

By Zoe Kenny

The latest news on climate change is not good. According to research by a team of NASA scientists led by Goddard Institute of Space Studies director James Hansen, one of the world’s foremost climatologists, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are already too high, and the targets set by the UN and governments around the world for CO2 emissions are far too low to prevent climate disaster within a few decades.