..
Russia explains why it vetoed climate change resolution at UN
13 Dec, 2021 19:11
Russia has vetoed a draft UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution, linking climate change to security threats. Russia's ambassador to the body claimed the document would have set a dangerously one-sided approach to future conflicts.
The UNSC voted on the draft resolution, tabled by temporary members Ireland and Niger, on Monday. The proposal, co-sponsored by over 100 nations, called upon the UN secretary-general to make climate-related risks “a central component” of conflict prevention, while “incorporating information on the security implications of climate change” to make the council “pay due regard to any root causes of conflict or risk multipliers.”
While the draft was supported by the majority of UNSC members, it was vetoed by Russia, with another permanent member, China, abstaining. Among the temporary invitees, India was the only country to vote against the draft. Between them, the three countries are home to close to 40% of the world's population.
Explaining the decision to sink the resolution, Russia’s Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia said the document would have imposed an extremely one-sided perspective to deal with conflicts, while potentially enabling the UNSC to put any country on its agenda under the guise of climate-related issues.
“We object to the creation of a new branch in the council’s work that asserts a generic and an automatic link between climate change and international security, turning a scientific and socio-economic issue into a political issue,” Nebenzia said during the meeting.
The proposed document was effectively “coercing the council to take a one-dimensional approach to conflicts and threats to international peace and security, i.e. through the climate lens,” Russia’s mission said in a separate statement.
We recognize the range of complex and intertwined challenges, including the impact of climate change, natural disasters, poverty, poor local governance that is mostly rooted in the colonial past, and terrorism threats that are an intolerable burden for some countries and regions. All those situations have their own specific characteristics.
The mission also noted that the draft was not actually as universally supported as its sponsors tried to present it, stating that the “penholders of the document were pushing it through without readiness to discuss the root causes of challenges” that the “vulnerable countries” are facing.
“As a responsible member of the United Nations and its Security Council, the Russian Federation along with India and China does not share such an approach imposed by the Western nations that have already made a significant number of countries expecting assistance believe in it,” the mission stressed.
Ireland has already voiced its displeasure over the demise of the draft resolution, with the country’s mission at the UN blasting the veto powers of permanent UNSC members as “an outdated tool, for what we think is an outdated perspective.”
“A historic opportunity to recognize climate change as contributing to conflict has been vetoed for now, but the consensus of international opinion is more than clear,” Ireland’s Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said.
Energy crisis coming as global oil production set to plunge by a third
15 Dec, 2021 13:40
Global crude production is expected to drop 30% by the end of the current decade due to underinvestment in oil and gas, according to Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman.
“We’re heading toward a phase that could be dangerous if there’s not enough spending on energy,” Abdulaziz bin Salman said, as quoted by Bloomberg.
He warned that falling investment in fossil fuels could result in an “energy crisis.”
According to the official, oil output may decline by as much as 30 million barrels per day by 2030.
He urged energy corporations and investors to ignore “scary messages” about oil and gas. A similar warning was voiced by Saudi finance minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, is currently trying to raise its production capacity to 13 million barrels a day from 12 million by 2027. The push is out of tune with the latest call from the International Energy Agency for the cessation of new investment in fossil fuel, that comes as part of the plan to neutralize carbon emissions by 2050.
According to data tracked by the International Energy Forum, a Riyadh-based think tank, global spending on energy projects plummeted by 30% to $309 billion during pandemic-hit 2020, recovering just slightly this year.
It would be nice to see a global plan as to how they will replace that much energy. If the drop in fossil fuels can't be addressed by other forms of energy, then we are headed for a disaster. Oil prices will go through the roof and that will result in 3rd world-type inflation.
=======================================================================================
Record temperature reported in Russian Arctic – UN
15 Dec, 2021 19:17
By Layla Guest
Murmansk Region. © Sputnik / Yuliy Ahromeev
An exceptional heatwave that hit a town in Russia’s far north last summer has been confirmed by the United Nations’ weather agency as setting a record for the Arctic Circle, in a year which saw wildfires rip across the country.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said that readings of 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 Fahrenheit) were logged in Verkhoyansk, home to 1,000 people, on June 20 last year. The temperatures occurred “during an exceptional and prolonged” heatwave.
The conditions were described by the WMO as “more befitting the Mediterranean,” and came as “average temperatures over Arctic Siberia reached as high as 10 degrees Celsius above normal” for much of the summer season. This resulted in massive fires and sea ice loss, which contributed to 2020 ranking among the three warmest years on record.
Verkhoyansk, which often dips to lows of -50 Celsius (-58 Fahrenheit), is situated 115km north of the Arctic Circle in Yakutia. The region is home to the village of Oymyakon – the world’s coldest permanently inhabited settlement – which regularly sees temperatures plunge to below -40 Celsius in winter.
Yakutia, however, has been hit by rising temperatures and devastating wildfires in recent years. The region is referred to by some as ‘the lungs of Russia’ because of its 265.1 million hectares of land covered by trees. This summer alone, fires destroyed 1.5 million hectares of forest.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sounded the alarm in August, warning that the average annual temperature for the past 44 years has been growing 2.8 times faster in his country than the global average. He said that this, “if not entirely, then at least to a large extent, is due to global climate change in our nation.”
Verkhoyansk already held the record for the place with the greatest temperature range on Earth. Temperatures in the small town had ranged between -68 and +37 degrees Celsius – a 105-degree difference. In Fahrenheit, that’s between -90 and +98.
A 188 degree spread in temperatures is astonishing! However, knowing how cold Russia, and particularly Siberia is, one would think that warming is a good thing.
IEA gives world reality check on ‘dirty’ coal use
18 Dec, 2021 12:53
The International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday that rising consumption in China, India and the US could bring the demand for global coal-fired power to a new high this year, despite efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
According to the report, global power generation from coal is expected to grow by 9%, reaching 10,350 terawatt-hours. The growth will be driven by a rapid economic recovery that has “pushed up electricity demand much faster than low-carbon supplies can keep up.”
The IEA highlighted that overall coal demand, including for industries such as cement and steel, could rise by 6% this year. It will not exceed the record consumption levels of 2013 and 2014, but could hit a new all-time high next year, the IEA warned.
The increase is “a worrying sign of how far off track the world is in its efforts to put emissions into decline towards net zero,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.
China, which consumes more than half of the world’s coal, is expected to see a 9% year-on-year increase in global coal-fired power generation in 2021. India’s generation is forecast to rise by 12% this year.
As part of the climate talks in Glasgow last month, countries finally agreed to “phase down” coal consumption to keep global temperature rises as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible. China has also pledged to start reducing coal consumption, but will do so only after 2025.
======================================================================================
Europe’s energy crisis just got worse
18 Dec, 2021 11:52
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
On top of an ongoing natural gas crunch, Europe faces the winter season with reduced nuclear output in France, exacerbating the energy crisis and leaving large parts of the continent praying for a milder winter.
France’s EDF stopped on Thursday two nuclear power plants after finding a fault at one during routine maintenance. This brings the total number of nuclear plants out of operation currently at four, which account for 13% of the current power availability in France.
Nuclear power generates most of France’s electricity. France gets more than 70% of its total electricity from nuclear power generation and is a major exporter of electricity, including to the UK.
The outage at the French nuclear plants comes just as temperatures in Europe started to fall and amid the ongoing natural gas crunch with gas in storage sites at the lowest levels in a decade.
Without part of the French electricity exports, some countries in northwest Europe could see their own power supply constrained.
If winter weather is colder than usual, this would mean no relief in the skyrocketing power prices and energy bills for consumers. This could also raise the possibility of rolling blackouts, Bloomberg notes.
“Now it would only take 2-3 degrees Celsius below the seasonal normal to get into trouble,” Emeric de Vigan, CEO of energy analysis firm COR-e, told Bloomberg.
Following the French halt to some of its nuclear plants, European power prices surged to record on Thursday.
The outages at the nuclear power plants in France come at the worst possible moment for Europe’s energy supply, considering that a cold winter could deplete its natural gas inventories and that the German network regulator which is reviewing the certification of the Russia-led Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline said on Thursday that it would not make a decision before July 2022.
========================================================================================
No comments:
Post a Comment