SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @02:49PM
Knowledge of electricity isnt that old.
usable in daily life it is even shorter.
indispensable even shorter then that.
the history is short but electricity has become very important for a huge chunk of the world; just ask any astronaut who has been to space and seen our planet from space.
this extreme development was probably due to insight that having electricity is very practical.
so in the last 100 years or so, anything that can be use as a fuel source to make electricity was pursued.
the "hang over" of pollution is rather recent.
now the big calculation starts where we have to weight the benefit of having 24/7 electricity against the pollution that some sources emit.
how much food poisoning tdue to spoiled un-refrigerated food was avoided? how many other technology advances that rely on electricity have "saved the day"?
i want to believe in renewables. i went thru the troubles to install some grid-tie solar. i am happy with it. i also invest in coal.
the reason is that world wide electricity generation is HUGE! i believe it is technically possible to go "renewable" for a big chunk.
i also believe that "renewables" should be decentralized due to their nature.
the sad and sober reality however is that there's ALOT of people that need to join the "decentralized" camp (yes i am looking at you new home builder that just didnt add solar panels to the roof) for it to work but just don't CARE!
they don't give a flying F...K. not even a tiny bit. "global warming" and "climate change" is some fad topic that will run out in the sand in a few years ...
the other point is that for your average person, the decentralized electricity generation is hampered by buerocratic hurdles.
there's no ev1l at work but just the fact that centralized electricity was marketed to the population for 100 years and the burocrazy is geared, laid out and OPTIMIZED for it.
so ... i don't like riding high horses, i got my solar, i'll put down any new "monster sized" non-renewable centralized power tech (coal, nat gas, nukes) whenever i can, but if i don't see solar installation spring up like mushrooms over night (because that's what it would take to make even a dent) i will invest in coal ... any maybe if their stocks haven't been run into the ground by the doubled tongued "i like renewables-but-have-nothing-to-show-for" crowd, use the profits for ... more solar installation.