In Australia, President Obama devoted an impressive piece, almost 8 minutes, of a longer address, to the issue of climate change, no doubt much to the discomfort of his climate denier host, Prime Minister Tony Abbot.
If this is Obama finally being Obama, I look forward to a repeat performance of this in the US, when he gets back. This kind of Presidential focus is what is necessary to move the public opinion ball forward and light a fire under climate deniers in congress.
The G20 communique will include a significant passage on climate change, EU officials said on Sunday, as the United States and other heavyweight nations override host Australia’s attempts to keep the issue off the formal agenda.
–On Sunday, momentum swung back to other major concerns for the Group of 20 leading economies, including climate change.
That is something of an embarrassment for Australia, which had argued it was not a clear economic issue and so should not be discussed at the G20. Indeed, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has questioned the science behind climate change.
“The most difficult discussion was on climate change,” an EU official told reporters on condition of anonymity. “This was really trench warfare, this was really step by step by step. In the end we have references to most of the things we wanted.”
The official said the passage included practical measures that countries could take and a reference to contributing to the Green Climate Fund, which U.S. President Barack Obama committed $3 billion to on Saturday.
The U.S. and Europe led the push to have climate change discussed at the meeting, with Obama using a speech on Saturday to warn that Australia’s iconic Great Barrier Reef was under threat.
Regardless, it took the President just 20 minutes to get to the topic on everyone’s minds: climate change. And when he did, the entire room broke into applause. “Here in the Asia Pacific, nobody has more at stake when it comes to thinking about and then acting on climate change,” he said. “Here in Australia, it means longer droughts, more wildfires… The incredible natural glory of the Great Barrier Reef is threatened.”
After acknowledging that there has been some “healthy debate” on the topic in our country, he stated that “leaders must be held accountable”. “Combating climate change cannot be the work of governments alone,” he said. “You have to keep raising your voices, because you deserve to live your lives in a world that is cleaner and that is healthier and that is sustainable … That’s not going to happen unless you are heard.”
He then announced he was going to contribute $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund to help developing nations deal with climate change, dropped the mike and moonwalked off the stage.
Except, no, it didn’t even stop there. He then went on to talk about broader issues of social inequality, religious freedom and human rights. “We’ll stand up for our gay and lesbian fellow citizens because they need to be treated equally under the law,” he said. “We’ll stand up for the rights and futures of our wives and daughters … because I believe that the best measure of whether a nation is going to be successful is whether they are tapping the talents of their women and treating them as full participants in politics and society and the economy.”
Stunned to be in the presence of a politician who had a semblance of a coherent idea and a general sense of moral decency, the entire audience rose to their feet in rapturous applause and convulsive fits of pleasure. Obama was then whisked away to the official start of the G20 Summit like a goddamned rock star.
“..Tony Abbott has questioned the science behind climate change..”
Actualy Abbott has not ‘questioned’ it – he has stated categoricaly that “Climate change is absolute crap”. His exact words.
And when the fact that forest fires have increased due to climate change was pointed out to him he claimed the messenger was “Talking out of her hat”.
And he isn’t a clever man pretending to be ignorant for expediency – he is that most dangerous of politicians – he is genuinely a deeply stupid little man.
Lord knows how the average Australian must be feeling when they see this embarrassing idiot on the world stage but I imagine they must be cringing at him. He has made Australia a global laughing stock within months of coming into office.
Tony Abbott unintentionally making a coherent argument for Climate Change:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BXjq_4SCIAAi8UC.jpg
I don’t know about the average Australian; maybe there’s no such animal, just a deep notch between those with and without a conscience, or those who did or didn’t ever pay attention in a school science or history class, or those who do or don’t listen to commercial talk radio. Abbott makes everyone I know cringe, but there’s a depressingly large number of Aussies (people occasionally overheard at the bus stop or beach…) who seem to find him tolerable or have even voted for his party.
“Stunned to be in the presence of a politician who employs some of the best cynical speech writers on the planet, the entire audience rose to their feet in rapturous applause and convulsive fits of pleasure. Obama was then whisked away to the official start of the G20 Summit where he pushed incessantly yet again for the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), a trade deal that would throw all environmental regulations into the toilet.”
There, I fixed it for you.
Are you serious about any of this? I’m not catching the humor.
Two articles:
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/barack-obama-trade-legacy-112939.html
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/14/7166849/tpp-trans-pacific-partnership
It’s not 100% clear what it would mean for the environment, as the negotiations are mostly secret. A free trade agreement, in general though, would mean some amount of environmental impact. Anything endorsed by Mitch McConnell is highly suspect environmentally as well. Wikileaks released a draft of the agreement that led to a lot of protest from the Sierra Club and other environmental groups. The Sierra Club has removed most of those protest links since then – not sure why.
A cached version:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MnTrdcI4sosJ:www.sierraclub.org/trade/trans-pacific-partnership-agreement.aspx+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
A remaining link:
http://action.sierraclub.org/site/DocServer/0584_TPP_Report_03_low.pdf?docID=14641
I’m well aware of the ramifications of the TPP and have signed a number of petitions and made public comments against it. I was speaking more to the “cynical speech writer” bit—do they also write his climate change speeches and are those cynical?. And did he actually run right off to pimp for the TPP?
It was an excellent speech. The reaction of the audience was extremely telling. What Obama did, was deliver the speech that we could only wish our political leaders would deliver.
As for Tony Abbott….
http://linkis.com/wp.me/8REZs
What we are seeing now in the Murdoch rags in Australia and comments forums all over the net are references to Obama as a “lame duck President” which of course is just an attempt to obfuscate the underlying issue, and that Tony Abbott and his bunch of misfits are on the nose and we wish we had a leader in this country who is prepared to talk about climate change and progressive social policy and isn’t monetarily propped up by vested interests. The other thing being spouted left right and centre by climate change deniers is that the deal struck between the USA and China means China doesn’t have to do anything for 16 years. Abbott himself has uttered similar. It is disingenuous and factually incorrect. For example….
http://theconversation.com/factcheck-does-the-new-climate-deal-let-china-do-nothing-for-16-years-34239
“….the underlying issue, and that (is that) Tony Abbott and his bunch of misfits…”
Didn’t work; I’ll try again:
http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/CO2.jpg
So it’s not corrected for the economic downturn after 2008, and there’s debate on why it fell back to early ’90’s levels, but it shows some hope of being able to take a dirty fuel offline and replace it with a cleaner one (or replace it with efficiency, depending on where in the debate you stand).
We’ve seen this before: http://climatecrocks.com/2013/05/28/us-co2-output-drops-is-it-really-due-to-natural-gas/
…but just the way the President phrased it made it stick out…
WOW! Look at that drop-off in CO2! Happy days!
May I remind everyone that this is an “Arcus Graph”?
The values on the Y-axis begin at 5,000 million metric tons, so the bottom 5/6 of the graph is missing. Projecting the decline out into the future would cause the plot to intersect the x-axis somewhere just outside the viewer’s right kneecap—-some 30 to 40 years away.
It would be great if it happened and we could get to zero CO2 emissions by ~2050, but anyone who thinks that will happen is dreaming. IMO, we’ll be lucky if we can get CO2 emissions to plateau at 1/2 the present levels in 30 to 40 years. There are far too many Tony Abbotts standing in the way.
50% current levels in U.S. emissions would be if we made electricity 80-90% alternatives and converted about half of our transport to electricity. That would leave the other half of transport, plus agricultural and industrial use. There would be a number of uses in these systems that would be much tougher, and would take longer, to convert.
That’s with political consensus and dramatic change.
On Andrew’s graph, I’ve wondered what percentage of the current emissions drop has just been the recession and adjusting to the higher prices of oil. Another part would be NG replacing coal, which has happened more than renewables replacing both.
Yep. We have seen more current graphs than this one that show an uptick in CO2 over the past couple of years as the economy has come out of the recession more. With the great increase in fracked NG and the drop in oil prices, everyone needs to get a very clear crystal ball to see where the trend lines are going. I also mentioned that the WashPost reported that falling gasoline prices and an improving economy seem to be driving increased sales of trucks and large SUV’s at the expense of small cars, hybrids, and EV’s. Go figure.
Well if i had used the bigger graph, it would have shown that the last time we cut emissions that drastically was when we were focused on efficiency and use reduction in the late ’70’s. The ’90’s was about Republicans blocking tighter fuel efficiency standards even though it was well understood our addiction to oil was putting us in a tough spot in the Middle East.
2013 had a 2% uptick in CO2 from less natgas displacement of coal, secondary to rising costs of the former fuel. But it also had less petroleum use compared to 2005.
It should also be noted something like 50% of US homes still have single pane windows; this metric could be used as a proxy on how serious Americans are about home efficiency. ‘Course, long term job prospects have been shot all to heck and we’re starting to become more a rent culture where mobility is necessary for continuous employment, which may be hurting desires for upgrades with long term payoffs.
And if you enjoyed that one, I’ve got another one for you:
http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/co21.jpg
Whoops – same one – try #2:
http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/co2pc.jpg
AHA! Another graph with the bottom 70+% missing that tells us little about an unknown future.
And it shows a per capita decline that is nearly wiped out by the fact that there were only ~210 million of us in 1972 and ~310+ million of us today (and there will likely be 50 million more of us by 2030).
Efficiency can be a big help, but we simply have to move away from carbon as fast as we can or it won;’t matter.