Climate Change Impacts Human Rights, Says UN Special Rapporteur

4 March 2016: A global temperature increase of one or two degrees Celsius would adversely affect human rights, including the rights to life, development, food, water, health and housing, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, John Knox, told the Human Rights Council (HRC).

Knox stressed that human rights obligations with respect to climate change include decisions about how much climate protection to pursue, as well as the mitigation and adaptation measures through which protection is achieved.

In its resolution 29/15, the HRC requested the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare a detailed 'Analytical study of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the relationship between climate change and the human right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (A/HRC/31/36).' The High Commissioner has asked for additional time and research, and will submit its report to the HRC at its 32nd session.

The Special Rapporteur shared an informal summary of inputs received on the 'Relationship between climate change and the human right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (A/HRC/31/CRP.4),' which is expected to inform OHCHR's final report. The informal summary notes, inter alia, that climate change: threatens to undermine the last half century of gains in development and global health; impacts physical and mental health in several ways; and disproportionately impacts the poor and other disadvantaged, marginalized and vulnerable groups.

According to the informal summary, respondents called for further integration of human rights in climate action at all levels of governance, as well as further analysis and study of the impacts of climate change on the right to health, among other recommendations.

During discussion, several delegations expressed support for protecting human rights in relation to climate adaptation and mitigation, including the European Union (EU) and Costa Rica. South Africa, on behalf of the African Group, supported enhanced, quick action to adapt to climate change to ensure the full realization of human rights, stressing that climate change threatens sustainable development. The Philippines called for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to keep temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and scaling up additional and predictable means of implementation. Brazil recognized the impacts of climate change on human rights, including economic, social and cultural rights. The EU asked how to better plan and manage urban areas to address synergies among climate change, sustainable development and urbanization.

The world does not need to wait until 2018 to start strengthening its efforts to address climate change and begin implementing the Paris Agreement on climate change, the Special Rapporteur reminded participants in his response, pointing to the use of renewable energy by Iceland, Morocco and Uruguay.

Knox presented on two aspects of his mandate, clarifying the human rights obligations relating to climate change, and on methods of implementing those obligations relating to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, in Geneva, Switzerland, on 3 March 2016. [UNOG Press Release] [OHCHR Press Release] [A/HRC/31/36] [Special Rapporteur Website]

read more: http://larc.iisd.org/news/climate-change-impacts-human-rights-says-un-special-rapporteur/

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Yes, Scientists Can Link Extreme Weather Events To Climate Change

When asked about a particular weather event’s link to climate change, scientists are typically cautious to make definitive statements — especially in the immediate aftermath, before they’ve had the chance to study the event.

But according to a new study, it’s getting easier for scientists to make the link between climate change and some forms of extreme weather. The study, published Friday by the National Academies Press, found that scientific advances over the past several years have helped scientists link increases in frequency and intensity of temperature and precipitation-related events like droughts and heat waves to climate change.

“In the past, a typical climate scientist’s response to questions about climate change’s role in any given extreme weather event was ‘we cannot attribute any single event to climate change,'” the report, completed by a committee of scientists, reads. “The science has advanced to the point that this is no longer true as an unqualified blanket statement. In many cases, it is now often possible to make and defend quantitative statements about the extent to which human-induced climate change (or another causal factor, such as a specific mode of natural variability) has influenced either the magnitude or the probability of occurrence of specific types of events or event classes.”

The report calls this branch of science, wherein researchers work to determine whether climate change contributed to a certain event, “event attribution.” To determine how and if climate change is linked to a certain event, scientists typically either reference the observational record of similar events — i.e. the recorded history of droughts leading back several decades — or use models to determine how likely a similar event would be in different warming scenarios. Most studies, the report states, use both of these tactics. More

Warming ocean water undercuts Antarctic ice shelves

“Upside-down rivers” of warm ocean water threaten the stability of floating ice shelves in Antarctica, according to a new study led by researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center published today in Nature Geoscience. The study highlights how parts of Antarctica’s ice sheet may be weakening due to contact with warm ocean water.

“We found that warm ocean water is carving these ‘upside-down rivers,’ or basal channels, into the undersides of ice shelves all around the Antarctic continent. In at least some cases these channels weaken the ice shelves, making them more vulnerable to disintegration,” said Karen Alley, a graduate research assistant at NSIDC and lead author of the study. Alley is also a Ph.D. student in the University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of Geological Sciences.

Ice shelves are thick floating plates of ice that have flowed off the Antarctic continent and spread out onto the ocean. As ice shelves flow out to sea, they push against islands, peninsulas, and bedrock bumps known as “pinning points.” Contact with these features slows the flow of grounded ice off the continent. While ice shelves take thousands of years to grow, previous work has shown that they can disintegrate in a matter of weeks. If more ice shelves disintegrate in the future, loss of contact with pinning points will allow ice to flow more rapidly into the ocean, increasing the rate of sea level rise.

“Ice shelves are really vulnerable parts of the ice sheet, because climate change hits them from above and below,” said Ted Scambos, NSIDC lead scientist and study co-author. “They are really important in braking the ice flow to the ocean.”

The features form as buoyant plumes of warm and fresh water rise and flow along the underside of an ice shelf, carving channels much like upside-down rivers. The channels can be tens of miles long, and up to 800 feet “deep.”

When a channel is carved into the base of an ice shelf, the top of the ice shelf sags, leaving a visible depression in the relatively smooth ice surface. Alley and her colleagues mapped the locations of these depressions all around the Antarctic continent using satellite imagery, as well as radar data that images the channels through the ice, mapping the shape of the ice-ocean boundary.

The team also used satellite laser altimetry, which measures the height of an ice shelf surface with high accuracy, to document how quickly some of the channels were growing. The data show that growing channels on the rapidly melting Getz Ice Shelf in West Antarctica can bore into the ice shelf base at rates of approximately 10 meters (33 feet) each year.

The mapping shows that basal channels have a tendency to form along the edges of islands and peninsulas, which are already weak areas on ice shelves. The team observed two locations where ice shelves are fracturing along basal channels, clear evidence that basal channel presence can weaken ice shelves to the point of breaking in vulnerable areas.

While no ice shelves have completely disintegrated due to carving by basal channels, the study points to the need for more observation and study of these features, said co-author Helen Amanda Fricker of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. “It's feasible that as ocean temperatures around Antarctica continue to rise, melting in basal channels could contribute to increased erosion of ice shelves from below."

The study, “Impacts of warm water on Antarctic ice shelf stability through basal channel formation,” was led by University of Colorado Boulder Ph.D. student Karen Alley, who worked with coauthors Ted Scambos of NSIDC and Matthew Siegfried and Helen Amanda Fricker of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. Their work was funded in part by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. More

Contacts

Jane Beitler,Communications, National Snow and Ice Data Center, press@nsidc.org, +1-303-492-1497
Brittany Hook, Communications Coordinator, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, scrippsnews@ucsd.edu, 858-534-3624

 

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A Take-No-Prisoners World of Oil

It’s evident that we’re still on a planet where oil rules. The question increasingly is: What exactly does it rule over? After all, every barrel of oil that’s burned contributes to a fast-approaching future in which the weather grows hotter and more extreme, droughts and wildfires spread, sea levels rise precipitously, ice continues to melt away in the globe's coldest reaches, and... well, you know that story well enough by now. In the meantime, Planet Earth has a glut of oil on hand and that, it turns out, doesn’t mean -- not for the major oil companies nor even for the major oil states -- that the good times are getting ready to roll.

Of all the powers struggling with that oil glut and the plunging energy prices that have gone with it, none may be more worth watching than Saudi Arabia. While exporting its own extremists and its extreme brand of Islam from Afghanistan to Syria, and lending a decades-long hand to the destabilization of the Greater Middle East, that kingdom has itself been a paragon of stability. Nothing, however, lasts forever, and so keeping an eye on the Saudis is a must. That’s especially so since the latest version of the royal family has also made what might be called the American mistake (with the backing of the Obama administration, no less) and for the first time plunged the Saudi military directly into a typically unwinnable if brutal war in neighboring Yemen.

Combine the destabilizing and blowback effects of wars that won’t end, including the Syrian one, and of oil prices that refuse to rise significantly and, despite the kingdom’s copious money reserves, you have a formula for potential domestic unrest. Already the royals are cutting their domestic subsidies to their own population, pulling billions of dollars in aid out of Lebanon, and exploring a possible $10 billion bank loan.

As TomDispatch’s invaluable energy expert Michael Klare suggests today, when oil prices began plummeting in 2015, the Saudis launched an “oil war of attrition,” imagining that others would be devastated by it (as OPEC partners Nigeria and Venezuela already have been) but that the royals themselves would emerge triumphant.

Should the unimaginable happen, however, and should the kingdom itself begin to come unglued in a Greater Middle East that is increasingly the definition of chaos -- watch out. Tom

Energy Wars of Attrition
The Irony of Oil Abundance
By Michael T. Klare

Three and a half years ago, the International Energy Agency (IEA) triggered headlines around the world by predicting that the United States would overtake Saudi Arabia to become the world’s leading oil producer by 2020 and, together with Canada, would become a net exporter of oil around 2030. Overnight, a new strain of American energy triumphalism appeared and experts began speaking of “Saudi America,” a reinvigorated U.S.A. animated by copious streams of oil and natural gas, much of it obtained through the then-pioneering technique of hydro-fracking. “This is a real energy revolution,” the Wall Street Journal crowed in an editorial heralding the IEA pronouncement.

The most immediate effect of this “revolution,” its boosters proclaimed, would be to banish any likelihood of a “peak” in world oil production and subsequent petroleum scarcity. The peak oil theorists, who flourished in the early years of the twenty-first century, warned that global output was likely to reach its maximum attainable level in the near future, possibly as early as 2012, and then commence an irreversible decline as the major reserves of energy were tapped dry. The proponents of this outlook did not, however, foresee the coming of hydro-fracking and the exploitation of previously inaccessible reserves of oil and natural gas in underground shale formations. More

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5 Ways to Sustain the Corporate Renewables Market

5 Ways to Sustain the Corporate Renewables Market

THE CORPORATION MOVES IN

The year 2015 represented a major turning point for electricity generation in the United States. The country retired 14 GW of fossil-fueled generation. Meanwhile, it brought online 16.4 GW of carbon-free generation, with wind energy leading the mix at 8.5 GW of new installed capacity, according to BNEF's Sustainable Energy in America 2016 Factbook. Natural gas, despite historical low commodity prices, brought online just 6 GW. This is an exciting sign of a changing tide, but the U.S. bulk power fleet today totals ~1,100 GW of capacity, and two-thirds of generation still comes from fossil fuels. Renewables still have much ground left to cover.

The good news is that renewable capacity growth has a new ally, with the potential of mobilizing tens—at times, hundreds—of additional MWs at each step: corporate demand for renewable energy.

RMI’s Business Renewables Center (BRC) has been focusing on renewables growth in large chunks—through corporations’ appetite to contract large amounts of electricity. And its member companies have been doing exactly that, in record numbers. Though a young market, corporate deals for large-scale renewables have been growing fast, from 0.56 GW in 2013, to 1.18 in 2014, to 3.44 last year. Meanwhile, the number of market participants has blossomedfrom 1 to 26. That corporate demand for renewables is now becoming the nation’s leading source of demand for wind power and an increasingly important source of demand for solar, too. More

 

 

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5 Ways to Sustain the Corporate Renewables Market

5 Ways to Sustain the Corporate Renewables Market

THE CORPORATION MOVES IN

The year 2015 represented a major turning point for electricity generation in the United States. The country retired 14 GW of fossil-fueled generation. Meanwhile, it brought online 16.4 GW of carbon-free generation, with wind energy leading the mix at 8.5 GW of new installed capacity, according to BNEF's Sustainable Energy in America 2016 Factbook. Natural gas, despite historical low commodity prices, brought online just 6 GW. This is an exciting sign of a changing tide, but the U.S. bulk power fleet today totals ~1,100 GW of capacity, and two-thirds of generation still comes from fossil fuels. Renewables still have much ground left to cover.

The good news is that renewable capacity growth has a new ally, with the potential of mobilizing tens—at times, hundreds—of additional MWs at each step: corporate demand for renewable energy.

RMI’s Business Renewables Center (BRC) has been focusing on renewables growth in large chunks—through corporations’ appetite to contract large amounts of electricity. And its member companies have been doing exactly that, in record numbers. Though a young market, corporate deals for large-scale renewables have been growing fast, from 0.56 GW in 2013, to 1.18 in 2014, to 3.44 last year. Meanwhile, the number of market participants has blossomedfrom 1 to 26. That corporate demand for renewables is now becoming the nation’s leading source of demand for wind power and an increasingly important source of demand for solar, too. More

 

 

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Power to the People

The way we generate and distribute electricity is changing. Now we have the opportunity to choose where we get our power from: to be our own mini power station, or to be tied to the utility company’s grid.

Graham Morse

PV solar panels allow consumers to generate their own electricity. And here in Cayman we can generate plenty. The trouble is it hasn’t been economic to store it for use during the night. So most of the homes and businesses in Cayman which generate their own power use CUC’s CORE (Customer Own Renewable Energy) program: they sell their power to CUC, and buy the electricity they use like everyone else.

But recent development in the production of lithium-ion batteries is a game-changer. Compared with lead-acid batteries, which have been around for a hundred years, lithium-ion batteries are smaller, lighter, produce constant power and have a greatly extended life. But because there was limited demand, they were very expensive. Now, fueled by growing demand from electric vehicles, battery manufacturers have gone into mass production, bringing down the cost. Tesla led the way. Last year they announced the launch of ‘Powerwall,’ a home power storage battery system that will fit on your kitchen wall.

And the cost of battery storage has plummeted. Five years ago it was over $1000 per KW, today it is $250 per KW and it is forecast to drop by 75% over the next year five years. This means that it is now financially viable to install a battery system that will store the power made in the day for use at night. Homes and businesses have a choice: burning fossil fuel and rising process with CUC, or going ‘off-grid’ – described in the industry as ‘grid defection.’ More Cayman Renewable Energy Association CREA

 

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Steering Committee on Partnerships for Small Island Developing States

Steering Committee on Partnerships for Small Island Developing States

25 Feb 2016 3:00 PM - 4:15 PMECOSOC Chamber

On December 2015, the General Assembly decided (A/70/472/Add.2 - paragraph 11) to establish the Small Island Developing States Partnership (SIDS) Framework, in accordance with paragraph 101 of the SAMOA Pathway, to monitor and ensure the full implementation of pledges and commitments through partnerships for small island developing States.The SIDS Partnership Framework consists, in short, of:

• A Steering Committee - open to all States Members of the United Nations or members of the specialized agencies. The Committee should support the follow-up of existing, and promote and advocate the launching of new, small island developing States partnerships. Entities of the United Nations system, international and regional organizations, major groups and other stakeholders will be invited to contribute, The Committee will be supported by the Secretariat, in particular the Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States.
• Organization of an annual an action-oriented, results-focused Global Multi-stakeholder SIDS Partnership Dialogue. The dialogue will provide an opportunity for reviewing progress made by existing partnerships, including, where applicable, review inputs from regional and national partnership dialogues, and be a place for sharing of good practices, lessons learned and challenges and solutions from SIDS partnerships. The dialogue will also be a platform for the launch of new partnerships for Small Island developing States.
• Development of a standardized partnership reporting template and process of SIDS partnerships, which takes into account existing reporting mechanisms and the need to minimize the reporting burden of all stakeholders involved in SIDS partnerships.

The SIDS Partnership Framework also encourages national and regional partnership dialogues to be organized through existing forums and meetings. The first meeting of the Steering Committee will be held on 25 February 2016, from 3pm - 4.15pm in the ECOSOC Chamber, UNHQ. The President of the General Assembly has appointed Maldives and Italy as co-chairs of the Steering Committee. More

 

 

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