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from the smoke-gets-in-your-eyes-and-lungs-and-clothes-and-environment dept.
Australia Doesn't Care to Break its Coal Habit in the Face of Climate Change:
Earlier this week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a dire warning about climate change: unless governments of the world coordinate to implement multiple long-term changes, we risk overshooting the 2°C warming scenario that countries strived to target in the Paris Agreement. This would lead to ecosystem damage, increasingly dramatic heat waves and previously-irregular weather patterns in different regions, and subsequent health impacts for humans.
Retiring coal-fired power plants is a significant action that could limit our race toward an unstable future. But Australia's officials don't quite care. According to The Guardian, the country's deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, said that Australia would "'absolutely' continue to use and exploit its coal reserves, despite the IPCC's dire warnings the world has just 12 years to avoid climate-change catastrophe."
McCormack also reportedly said that Australia would not change its coal policies "just because somebody might suggest that some sort of report is the way we need to follow and everything that we should do."
The country's previous prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, abandoned emissions reductions targets that the nation had agreed to, and Australia's renewable energy targets are set to expire in 2020. In September, government analysis showed that Australia's greenhouse-gas emissions increased last year, and independent analysts said the country would likely not meet the greenhouse-gas emissions reductions that it committed to under the Paris Agreement. Unlike the US, Australia has not exited the Paris Agreement, but the country's current prime minister has declined to add any more money to the global climate fund.
[...] Still, Australia ranks only fourth for economic coal resources, with the US, Russia, and China ahead of it. In the US, which has the world's largest economic coal resource, the Trump administration has had a difficult time fighting to save coal. On Wednesday, US coal supplier Westmoreland filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the face of $1.4 billion in debt. That makes the company the fourth major US coal supplier to file for bankruptcy in recent years due to the significant decline in coal use.
Internalize the profits, externalize the costs?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @03:35PM (20 children)
https://endcoal.org/global-coal-plant-tracker/ [endcoal.org]
Coal plants in 2018:
Australia - 22
China - 1003
Sapienti sat.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snow on Thursday October 11 2018, @04:38PM (4 children)
This type of thinking doesn't help anyone. We are all in this together. If everyone points to the other guy and then carries on 'because the other guy is worse', it will end in disaster.
In Alberta here, there are a lot of people that don't think that Canada should work towards reducing CO2 emissions because Canada's emissions when compared to the entire planet are rather low. 'China is so much worse, so why try?'
It doesn't matter if we have high per capita CO2 emissions -- is all 'but whatabout China?!'
Someone has to lead the charge for a low carbon future. Why shouldn't it be richer first world countries that lead by example?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @04:51PM (1 child)
... they should build tons of nuclear reactors, and design a well-studied program for dealing with the nuclear waste.
But, no. You crazy fucks won't allow that either. So, FUCK YOU.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:57PM
So you admit there is a problem? Just need to be able to rage out on something in order to do so?
Or are you just getting your rage on using the subterfuge of caring about the problem?
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:07PM
Because maybe they want to stay first world countries?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:15PM
Don't forget that these are largely the same people who say "But what about Hillary?" to justify gross corruption and dereliction of duties of constitutional oversight.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:22PM (13 children)
Global new coal plant pipeline keeps shrinking [endcoal.org]
India and China going cold on most new coal
Most of the recent cuts to new coal plant capacity are due to dramatic policy changes in China and India.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:02PM (12 children)
China has cancelled more coal plants than Australia has.
GP's numbers are almost perfect to show that China is doing better: what's the population ratio ?
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:44PM (11 children)
Mother Nature deals in ABSOLUTES. Any blabbing about "ratios" just gives away your SJW agenda.
And if even YOU do not care about actual carbon emissions, why should anyone?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @07:02PM (4 children)
Lol, so if we are absolutists then we're impractical idiots who don't care about reality. If we do care about reality and how to practically make headway on the problem then we're just SJW idiots with an agenda.
You're a self-imposed moron, there is nothing left to debate at this point. You're probably violently imposed monopoly fool spouting more right wing propaganda.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @07:15PM (3 children)
...than to speak out and remove all doubt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @10:20PM (2 children)
Then why do you keep posting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @11:15PM (1 child)
Just once in your sad SJW life
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @12:16AM
You're calling me a warrior for justice like that is a bad thing? Man, you can't even english! Get back to your bridge you troll, maybe down there you can get away with eating innocent babies and stealing from passing nuns.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday October 11 2018, @11:02PM (5 children)
Total carbon is what counts, carbon:population is a (very rough) estimate of how hard any society needs to work to reduce total carbon.
Carbon:population isn't a very useful ratio. Something like carbon:forest area is much better (one of the more cost effective ways of temporarily slowing global warming is to pay Brazil to stop cutting down the forest). Which is not to say that we shouldn't also be drastically reducing population size.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @11:30PM (4 children)
You (a population/society of one) could "work to reduce total carbon" however hard you wish, up to and including not breathing air, and still the "total carbon" would not get reduced in any noticeable way.
Doing stuff for guaranteed absence of effect is virtue signaling. A government acting like that is virtue signaling at citizens' expense.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by melikamp on Friday October 12 2018, @12:08AM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:48AM (2 children)
people like me inland on the Canadian rock don't care we secretly welcome it
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @07:10AM (1 child)
Speak for yourself. The warming will drive Californians up here. And Floridans. Ugh. If only we could get the Mexicans to leapfrog the USA and maybe keep the USA'ians at bay somehow...
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday October 12 2018, @04:04PM
Invite the Mexicans to Canada for sure! I was told by some developer that they will happily finance a wall on the southern border to keep aliens out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:56PM
The bigger problem is that AU sells cheap coal to china.