Governments say they are still pushing towards cleaner energy despite low oil prices, but their resolve will be tested in the coming months when they have to outline their green plans.
Current oil prices are only a small factor in fixing energy plans for 2025 or 2030, according to many delegates who attended UN talks in Geneva earlier this month to work on a deal to combat climate change that should be agreed in Paris in December.
As Christiana Figueres, the UN’s climate chief, has pointed out, the only safe assumption that every country can make about oil prices is that they will continue to be volatile.
By contrast, solar or wind farms, once built, “have a clear and predictable price of zero dollars”, according to her
Crude oil rose yesterday with Brent and US futures on pace to post their first monthly gains since June, supported by an improving demand outlook and supply outages. Brent April crude was up $1.27 at $61.32 a barrel, on pace to post a 15% monthly gain, the first since June and biggest in percentage terms since May 2009, but still almost half the $115 they reached in June last year.
A test will come when governments outline national plans for combating climate change beyond 2020 as part of the Paris deal. They have set an informal deadline of March 31 to submit plans, but many are likely to be late.
Yesterday, Switzerland became the first nation to submit its national plan. The Swiss government submission said it would cut national greenhouse gas emissions by 50% below 1990 levels by 2030, with at least 30% of the curbs at home and the rest by investing in carbon-cutting projects abroad.
The country has a long way to go, however. In 2012, Switzerland said its emissions were just 2.8% below 1990 levels.
The EU has said it will cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. The US and China have also outlined long-term plans.
In an encouraging sign, a poll yesterday found that a significant majority of Americans believed combating climate change was a moral issue that obligated them - and world leaders - to reduce carbon emissions. The result of the Reuters/IPSOS poll suggests that appeals based on ethics could be key to shifting the debate over climate change in the US, where those demanding action to reduce carbon emissions and those who resist it are often at loggerheads.
Two-thirds of respondents (66%) said that world leaders were morally obligated to take action to reduce CO2 emissions. And 72% said they were “personally morally obligated” to do what they could in their daily lives to reduce emissions.
Oceans clogged by trash
The world’s oceans are clogged with plastic debris, but how much of it finds its way into the seas annually? Enough to place the equivalent of five grocery bags full of plastic trash on every 30cm of every nation’s coastline around the globe.
That’s according to scientists who released research this month estimating that a staggering 8mn metric tonnes of plastic pollution enter the oceans each year from the world’s 192 coastal countries based on 2010 data.
Based on rising waste levels, they estimated that more than 9mn tonnes would end up in the oceans in 2015.
Experts have sounded the alarm in recent years over how plastic pollution is killing huge numbers of seabirds, marine mammals, sea turtles and other creatures while sullying ocean ecosystems.
The latest research finding is a wake-up call to protect our oceans.
