Why Cheap Oil is the Key to Beating Climate Change - Mitchell Anderson

As world leaders enter the home stretch of the Paris climate negotiations they should keep in mind a key measure of success in limiting carbon emissions: cheap oil. The lower the global price of oil, the more it stays in the ground – due to the brutal, if counterintuitive, logic of the petroleum marketplace.

Most of the easily extracted oil deposits are long gone. What are left are high-cost, high-risk long shots such as the Alberta tar sands, deep-water reservoirs off Brazil, and drilling the high Arctic. Companies hoping to profit from the last dregs of the petroleum age need to convince their investors to part with massive amounts of capital in hopes of competitive returns often decades down the road.

Billions have already fled the Alberta oil sands in the last year as the global price of oil collapsed from over $100 per barrel to below $40. Shell has just called a halt to its Carmon Creek project in Northern Alberta, writing off $2bn in booked assets and 418 million barrels of bitumen reserves. A barrel of bitumen will release about 480kg of carbon dioxide from extraction, refining, transport and combustion. This head office write-down means that 200m tonnes of carbon will not be released into the atmosphere.

Two other tar sands projects were also shelved this year with reserves of about 3bn barrels. If these investments stay dead the world will avoid another 1.6tn tonnes of dangerous carbon emissions. Together the cancellation of these three projects alone amount to the equivalent of taking more than 14m cars off the road for the next 25 years.

There a simple correlation between future emissions and the price of oil needed to make that profitable. Such a graph has been compiled by Carbon Tracker, a UK-based non-profit organisation set up to educate institutional investors on the increasing financial risks of the fossil fuel sector.

Its message to investors is simple: the world must limit additional emissions to below 900 gigatons to avoid potentially catastrophic climate consequences – and 40% of this future carbon budget – about 360 gigatons – is projected to come from the oil sector. Anything more than that must stay in the ground – the so-called unburnable carbon.

And what’s the price of oil that could save to world? Anything below $75 a barrel of Brent crude means that companies cannot profitably extract more than 360 gigatons of the world’s remaining reserves – no messy policy solutions required.

Just last year the price of Brent crude was about $110 a barrel, a price that would gainfully produce about 500 gigatons of carbon emissions by 2050. Now it is less than $50, which would only produce 180 gigatons over the same period. If prices stay where they are, the world will avoid some 320bn tonnes of carbon emissions by 2050 in precluded production from uneconomic oil fields.

For Details: The Guardian

Recent eBook Releases by FAO

United Nation Food and Agriculture Organization jut releases the new collection of eBooks. Please click on the given link to download;

FAO eBooks Collection

For More eBooks on Agriculture and Allied Fields, Please follow the given link:

AEP BOOK BANK

7 Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint- WWF

Want to save some dollars while conserving the environment? Even few simple changes around your home can reduce your carbon footprint. From opting for a shower instead of a bath to supplying your own reusable bags at the grocery store, you can prevent waste and pollution. Take a look at some fixes that will have you living greener in no time.

1. Dial it down. Moving your thermostat down just two degrees in winter and up two degrees in summer could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per year.

2. Turn it off. Artificial lighting accounts for 44 percent of electricity use in office buildings. Make it a habit of turning off the lights when you're leaving any room for 15 minutes or more. Same goes for electronics; switch off power strips and unplug electrical devices when you're not using them.

3. Use cold water. Using cold water can save up to 80 percent of the energy required to wash clothes. Choosing a low setting on the washing machine will also help save water.

4. Switch to e-billing. In the United States, paper products make up the largest percentage of municipal solid waste, and hard copy bills alone generate almost 2 million tons of CO2. Save paper by signing up for e-billing.

5. Buy local. In North America, fruits and vegetables travel an average of 1,500 miles before reaching your plate. Buy fresh, local food to eliminate the long distances traveled and preserve nutrients and flavor.

6. Recycle. You can recycle plastic bottles, paper, electronics and batteries, among other items. Learn how to properly dispose of or recycle these products and reduce consumer waste.

7. Go solar. Powering your home with solar panels can reduce your electric bills, shrink your carbon footprint and increase your home's value.

Pledge to help our planet and the wildlife we share it with by powering more of your life with renewable energy.

For More Green Tips: Worldwildlife.org

Expansion in Food Trade Must Support National and Global Food Security Objectives, FAO report says

Rules governing international trade of food and agricultural products should be crafted with an eye to improving countries' food security and other development objectives. For this, a pragmatic approach that would align agricultural and trade policies at the national level is needed, a new FAO report argues.

The expected increase in global trade of farm products along with shifting patterns of trade and multiples sources of risks to global supplies will give trade and its governance a heightened influence over the extent and nature of food security everywhere. As a result, the challenge for policy makers has evolved into one of ensuring that its expansion "works for, and not against, the elimination of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition," according to The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets (SOCO).

The new edition of this flagship FAO report aims to reduce the current polarization of views on agricultural trade, wherein some insist that free trade leads to more available and accessible food while others, noting the recent bout of volatile food prices, insist on the need for a more cautious approach to trade, including a variety of safeguards for developing countries.

Subtitled "Achieving a better balance between national priorities and the collective good," the SOCO report emphasizes that the role of trade varies enormously with country characteristics, such as income, economic and landholding structure, the stage of agricultural development and the degree of integration of farmers in global value chains. Amid such variety in country conditions, international rules for formulating national trade policies should be supportive of efforts to mitigate disruptions that affect any of the four dimensions of food security: availability, access, utilization and stability.

Balancing short-run and long-run objectives is becoming vitally important considering that the nature of disruptions varies enormously and that market shocks will likely become more frequent due to geopolitical, weather and policy-induced uncertainties. While efforts to intervene and shield domestic markets from global price volatility could in fact lead to increased domestic price volatility, agricultural incentives play an important role in boosting agricultural production and efficiency and fostering broader economic growth.

For Complete Article: FAO.ORG

Forest Protection Could Hold Key to Strong Climate Deal

A new report released today by IUCN, Climate Advisers and WWFreveals the huge potential that more effective and ambitious forest conservation and restoration could make in the fight to combat climate change.

This report has found that if just 12 forest countries, including Brazil and Indonesia, meet their existing forest goals this would cut annual global climate emissions by 3.5 gigatonnes in 2020 – equivalent to the total annual emissions from India and Australia put together. With additional ambition on top of these goals, achieving near zero forest loss in these countries by 2020 would save nearly 5 gigatonnes a year - as much as India, Australia plus Japan’s annual emissions. 

But even current national plans to reduce deforestation and restore forest landscapes might not be realised without stronger international support, as most are conditional on international finance.

In the run up to the Paris climate change talks, dozens of countries included action on forests in the national plans they submitted - so called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions. Today’s report analyses the targets of 12 countries - Brazil, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Indonesia, Mexico, Nepal, Paraguay, Peru, Tanzania - that are home to nearly half the world’s tropical forests.

It’s vital that the climate finance pledges and the final Paris agreement give forest nations the necessary long-term support to press ahead with, and extend, their conservation and restoration plans.

This report will be discussed at an IUCN event in Paris on 9 December at the UN climate conference. This report is a consultation draft with initial results. The full technical report will be published in 2016 and we are open to feedback on the messaging and approach in this version.

Source: WWF.ORG

Alaska is Melting....

The US Geological Survey used satellite and on-ground data to estimate that 38% of mainland Alaska has permafrost, a band of soil, rock or sediment that is frozen underground for at least two consecutive years. In Fairbanks, Alaska, the soil has been frozen for several thousand years at just 30 to 40cm underground, with only the upper level of soil thawing every summer before freezing again in winter.

But this icy mass is now under threat from warming temperatures. Under scenarios calculated by USGS, 16% to 24% of Alaska’s permafrost will disappear by the end of the century under varying climate change outcomes. The declines are expected to be sharper in the heavily forested central areas of Alaska, rather than the state’s north.

Alaska divided as Shell halts Arctic drilling: heartbreaking news or a miracle?

 

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“Increasing air temperatures have led to widespread thawing and degradation of permafrost, which in turn has affected ecosystems, socioeconomics, and the carbon cycle of high latitudes,” the USGS study states. “Taken together, these results have obvious implications for potential remobilization of frozen soil carbon pools under warmer temperatures.”

The melting of the permafrost would release carbon stored for many years underground, causing the sort of “feedback loop” that has concerned climate scientists: as warming temperatures melt ice in the Arctic region, carbon and methane that has been locked away for thousands of years is being released, thereby fueling more warming and melting.

Source: The Guardian