Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday October 11 2018, @03:04PM   Printer-friendly
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?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:17PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:17PM (#747557)

    "Australia Doesn't Care to Break its Coal Habit in the Face of Climate Change"

    That entails a specific claim that is in major dispute.

    One side wants more money and more power over your life.
    The other side is in danger of losing careers, family, and friends just for speaking up.

    I think I know which side to support.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @07:15PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @07:15PM (#747588)

    Yeah, the stupid side. Like really stupid. History will judge you assholes accordingly if any such records persist. Maybe our society will be referred to as the "arrogant stupid ancients" that destroyed the world.

    I have little doubt that humanity will survive pretty much whatever, but I'd prefer if we built a better more resilient society. A little hard when a large part of that society sticks their collective heads in the sand and pretends that every day is opposite day.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @09:33PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @09:33PM (#747661)

      I'd prefer if we built a better more resilient society.

      Great, but this is nothing to do with whats suggested by the people currently hysterical about the climate.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @10:24PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @10:24PM (#747687)

        Wrong. That kind of statement is what makes people regard you as stupid. I doubt you're actually stupid, just propagandized and clueless.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @05:31AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @05:31AM (#747787)

          Im sure you think "preppers" are morons...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @07:26AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @07:26AM (#747808)

    >The other side is in danger of losing careers, family, and friends just for speaking up.

    Lol, insec detector alert! Somehow this person thinks that ... Aussies ... will ... lose ... yeah I can't even get a coherent story that could make this make sense.

    Option 1) aussies speak up and stand up for their autonomy, and keep burning coal, losing no careers
    Option 2) aussies don't defend their ancestral right to burn everything, and ... don't lose careers

    Just, garbagebrains. Go out and get some sun, stop listening to podcasts that say you're a winner and just oppressed. You're not oppressed. You're just shit at life. You get better at life day by day working at it. Try that instead of feeling entitled, for a year, and see if you want to regress to the way you are now.

  • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday October 15 2018, @05:23PM

    by meustrus (4961) on Monday October 15 2018, @05:23PM (#749143)

    I know, right? I'm so sick of fossil-fuel-burning power utilities clamoring for more money and more power over my life. I just can't wait for the day that solar power and house batteries are cheap and easy enough that I can disconnect from that grid entirely and stop interacting with at least one of these government-entangled monopolies.

    One can only hope that more chemical engineers can find workplaces that are happy to support plant-based alternatives to traditionally oil-based products like plastics. Inventing cheap, sustainable alternatives would be really counter-productive to their most common and lucrative employers.

    --
    If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?