All posts filed under: Climate

Ireland first country to divest from fossil fuels

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The Irish parliament has passed the Fossil Fuel Divestment Bill last July 12, making Ireland the world’s first country to divest from fossil fuels. The bill requires Ireland’s €8bn sovereign fund, the Irish Strategic Investment Fund, to drop all coal, oil, and gas investments within the next five years. The bill was proposed by TD Thomas Pringle who said in a statement: “The real effects of the Bill will be felt if other countries follow Ireland’s lead in sufficient numbers – this will help drive demand for low-fossil-fuel investments at a global level and potentially stimulate investment in renewable and sustainable alternatives.” Eamonn Meehan, executive director of Trocaire, an Irish environmental lobby that has pushed for the bill said that the decision was “vital” and sends a “powerful signal” to the community. He also said that, “the passing of this Bill is good news but has to mark a significant change of pace on the issue,” addressing Ireland’s lack of climate action. The country was ranked second-worst country in Europe in terms if climate action and GHG …

GIF: Five shared socio-economic pathways scenarios

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As part of my internship, I was asked to do an animation of the five IPCC pathways scenarios. An explainer by Carbon Brief on these scenarios: Over the past few years, an international team of climate scientists, economists and energy systems modellers have built a range of new “pathways” that examine how global society, demographics and economics might change over the next century. They are collectively known as the “Shared Socioeconomic Pathways” (SSPs). These SSPs are now being used as important inputs for the latest climate models, feeding into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sixth assessment report due to be published in 2020-21. They are also being used to explore how societal choices will affect greenhouse gas emissions and, therefore, how the climate goals of the Paris Agreement could be met. The new SSPs offer five pathways that the world could take. Compared to previous scenarios, these offer a broader view of a “business as usual” world without future climate policy, with global warming in 2100 ranging from a low of 3.1C to a high of 5.1C …

Without NETs, deep CO2 cuts needed by big country emitters to remain below 2°C goal

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Countries have agreed to keep global temperature rise to “well-below 2°C, pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C”. As of writing, 172 countries had submitted their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), a national climate plan for all countries involved — many of which are informed by studies relying on large-scale global implementation of NETs. NETs work by taking CO2 out of the atmosphere. The inclusion of NETs in 2°C pathway scenarios expand the available carbon budget — the maximum amount of CO2 humans can emit to keep global temperatures below an increase of 2°C. However, NETs such as Bioenergy Carbon Capture Storage (BECCS) have yet to be proven to be effective at scale and argued in this paper to be too speculative an assumption to be included in all 2°C pathway scenarios. In other words, many more scenarios without BECCS, illustrating alternative means of cutting CO2, should be analysed and published in academic literature than is currently the case. BECCS is a technology that involves sequestration of CO2 by plants, its use as bioenergy, …

Mapping sea level rise at 1.5 versus 2 degrees of global warming

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Countries have agreed in the Paris Agreement to hold global temperature increase to “well below 2°C above preindustrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.” However, the world has now reached 1 degree celsius of warming and country commitments to reach 1.5 degrees have not been met. Without mitigation of GHG emissions, sea level rise as a result of anthropogenic climate change will worsen and will affect millions of people. Here is a global map of how many people will be affected at 1.5 degrees celsius of global warming versus 2 degrees celsius of global warming. Click the photo below to view the interactive data map:

Increasing women’s resilience in Fiji through participatory governance

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[This was a policy brief submitted to our gender and development class in UEA] Fiji, an island country comprised of more than 300 islands and atolls, is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. According to COP 23 Fiji (2017), some of the climate change impacts the small island state are facing and will continue to face include sea level rise, stronger El Niño patterns, food and water borne diseases, extreme weather events, and ocean acidification. Some if these impacts will have a greater effect on women than on men. For example, salinisation and drought may mean women have to spend longer collecting water and increases in infectious or water-borne diseases post-climate change events will result in a greater burden of care for women. (UN Women Fiji, n.d.) UN Women Fiji (ibid) also identified an increase in gender based violence post-disaster. Women in evacuation and temporary shelters are subjected to rape and violence. There is also low access to sexual and reproductive health post-disaster. These vulnerabilities that women face need to be addressed …