by Lili Fuhr (Project Syndicate) BERLIN – Mainstream politics, by definition, is ill equipped to imagine fundamental change. But last December in Paris, 196 governments agreed on the need to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels – an objective that...
by Nika Knight (Common Dreams) A sustainable solution to the climate crisis will also work to alleviate poverty and seek climate justice, says Friends of the Earth Germany "A future without climate chaos for all human beings on our planet is only possible if we don't...
By Kevin Anderson and Glen Peters (Science) Reliance on negative-emission concepts locks in humankind’s carbon addiction In December 2015, member states of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Paris Agreement, which aims to...
by David Roberts (Vox) If we mean what we say, no more new fossil fuels, anywhere. One of the morbidly fascinating aspects of climate change is how much cognitive dissonance it generates, in individuals and nations alike. The more you understand the brutal logic of...
A UK research fund has recently announced that £8.3m is being made available to fund up to 10 different research projects for a programme on Greenhouse Gas Removal from the Atmosphere. Examples given as potential topics for research proposals are: Soil carbon,...
Below is an article published by Greenpeace's Energy Desk about the latest scandal involving the Kemper County CCS project. This is extremely relevant to the bioenergy with CCS (BECCS) debate: Kemper County was one of two flagship CCS projects supported by the Obama...
Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) was granted a huge boost of support by the IPCC’s “mitigation” Working Group in their 5th Assessment Report. Since then growing attention has been given to this technofix as the main approach to removing CO2 from the...
Norway's parliament has just agreed to bring forward the goal of achieving "net zero" greenhouse gas emissions from 2050 to 2030, making it "a very ambitious goal". This means that in 14 years Norway will not be a net producer of climate-changing emissions. Why has...
by Mary Louise Malig (Global Forest Coalition) The Paris Agreement has been signed in New York with much fanfare, a lot of shaking hands and patting each other on the back, and claims that “we did it” – that is, agreed a historic climate agreement that would save the...
This comment by Biofuelwatch's Almuth Ernsting was posted in reply to a guest article by Prof Jason Lowe (Head of Knowledge Integration and Mitigation Advice at the UK’s Met Office and lead scientist for the government-funded AVOID2 research programme) which was...
An article in BizGreen called “How to build a billion dollar industry to fight climate change” features insights from two mmbers of the University of Berkley's Centre for Carbon Removal, describing how increased funding from philanthropic sources can play a key role...
by Almuth Ernsting (New Internationalist) Are certain proposals to reduce carbon emissions based on technological hype? At a COP21 side event last December, proponents of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) hosted Mike Marsh, the CEO of publicly-owned Canadian energy...
by Steven T. Corneliussen (Physics Today) To mitigate climate change, has the planet “gambled its future on the appearance in a puff of smoke of a carbon-sucking fairy godmother”? During the Paris climate summit late last year, European policy analyst Oliver Geden’s...
In his recent article in Nature, Dr Philip Williamson highlights how the targets set out in the Paris Agreement mask an underlying assumption that they will be met through large-scale carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere and, in particular, through Bioenergy...
by Kevin Anderson (kevinanderson.info) The Paris Agreement is a genuine triumph of international diplomacy and of how the French people brought an often fractious world together to see beyond national self interest. Moreover, the agreement is testament to how...
by Richard Martin (MIT Technology Review) Climate change agreements rest on negative emissions technologies that may be unachievable. While many scientists and climate change activists hailed December’s Paris agreement as a historic step forward for international...
Rather than relying on far-off negative-emissions technologies, Paris needed to deliver a low-carbon road map for today, argues Kevin Anderson in Nature. (A longer version of this article can be found here.) The climate agreement delivered earlier this month in Paris...
Paris, 11 December 2015 Seemingly out of the blue (or rather, out of the black smog of the UNFCCC process), some of the largest historical culprits for climate change, countries including the United States, Canada and the European Union, have decided to back an...
by Oliver Munnion, Global Forest Coalition blog Yesterday I went to a briefing at the COP21 summit on how realistic achieving a 1.5 degree target as part of the Paris climate deal is, as opposed to the 2 degree target that was first proposed. At the end of the...
by Rachel Smolker, The Ecologist Paris has been awash with hype about 'CO2 recycling' and 'carbon neutral' or even 'carbon negative' technologies based on burning millions of trees, writes Rachel Smolker. But the alchemical notion that waste carbon can be spun into...
by Almuth Ernsting, Truthout UN climate conferences provide a platform for advocating real solutions to the climate crisis - but also for selling and promoting false ones. At the climate conference this and next week in Paris, many civil society groups and social...
Biofuelwatch has released a new comprehensive report about Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). Full report Executive Summary (Full references for the report) BECCS is being proposed as a way of removing billions of tonnes of carbon every year from...
by Oliver Munnion, Our Kingdom In the UK, a new coal fired power station is being developed by Drax that, if built, would be the first new coal fired power station to be switched on since Drax’s existing power station opened in 1974. This is surprising given that...
by Neth Daño and Pat Mooney (Project Syndicate) OTTAWA – The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in December will feature all the tightly choreographed production values of a Hollywood blockbuster. The cast will be huge: presidents and prime ministers at...