[TheClimate.Vote] April 2, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Thu Apr 2 09:16:49 EDT 2020

/*April 2, 2020*/

[April Fools jab scores point]
*An April Fools climate hoax in the middle of a pandemic*

Published: April 1, 2020
By Rachel Koning Beals
New release stating Google would no longer support think tanks that deny 
climate-change science, pledges zero emissions by 2025 was a parody
MarketWatch and other technology and investing sites misreported earlier 
Wednesday that Google parent Alphabet would cut ties with lobbyists and 
think tanks that deny accelerating man-made climate change.

The search giant GOOGL, -5.15% GOOG, -4.91% also reportedly had 
announced plans to cut ties with fossil-fuel sources. Except it did not 
make that announcement.

The posting was a prank put out by the New York City arm of a climate 
protest group, which has called out Google's practices before.

News sites generally believed that, amid the coronavirus pandemic, April 
Fools Day parody releases, for which media outlets are on alert at this 
time of year, would be rare or nonexistent this year given the rising 
U.S. death toll...
- - -
Late last year, more than 1,000 Google workers signed a public letter 
calling on their employer to commit to an aggressive "company-wide 
climate plan" that includes canceling contracts with the fossil fuel 
industry and halting its donations to climate-change deniers, including 
those in Wednesday's protest release. That letter had urged neutral 
emissions by 2030.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-will-no-longer-pay-lobbyists-that-deny-climate-change-pledges-zero-emissions-by-2025-2020-04-01

[now is change]
*Will the coronavirus kill the oil industry and help save the climate?*
Analysts say the coronavirus and a savage price war means the oil and 
gas sector will never be the same again
Damian Carrington, Jillian Ambrose and Matthew Taylor
Wed 1 Apr 2020
The plunging demand for oil wrought by the coronavirus pandemic combined 
with a savage price war has left the fossil fuel industry broken and in 
survival mode, according to analysts. It faces the gravest challenge in 
its 100-year history, they say, one that will permanently alter the 
industry. With some calling the scene a "hellscape", the least lurid 
description is "unprecedented".

A key question is whether this will permanently alter the course of the 
climate crisis. Many experts think it might well do so, pulling forward 
the date at which demand for oil and gas peaks, never to recover, and 
allowing the atmosphere to gradually heal.

The boldest say peak fossil fuel demand may have been dragged into the 
here and now, and that 2019 will go down in history as the peak year for 
carbon emissions. But some take an opposing view: the fossil fuel 
industry will bounce back as it always has, and bargain basement oil 
prices will slow the much-needed transition to green energy...
- - -
However, not all experts think the oil industry's loss is necessarily a 
gain for green energy and the climate. "If anything it may hold up the 
share of oil for longer, because it's cheaper. It could be bad news from 
a climate point of view," said Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy 
at the University of Oxford.

He said securing a green economic recovery from the coronavirus crisis 
will require deliberate policy measures from governments: "This is where 
the carbon tax comes in. Now is the moment."

'Historic opportunity'
Governments are deploying stupendous sums to stimulate the 
coronavirus-wracked global economy - $5 trillion from the G20 nations 
alone - but how it is disbursed remains uncertain. European Union 
leaders have promised to make their emergency measures align with their 
Green Deal programme and Fatih Birol, executive director at the 
International Energy Agency, has said there is an "historic opportunity" 
to pour investment into energy technologies that cut greenhouse gas 
emissions.

But the $2tn US coronavirus relief package is doling out $60bn to 
struggling airlines and offering low-interest loans that are available 
to fossil fuel companies, without requiring any action to stem the 
climate emergency. The Canadian government has said it will give loans 
to its oil companies, who say they are on "life support"...
- - -
The lasting impact of the price war depends on how long Saudi Arabia and 
Russia can keep pumping cheap oil. While their production costs are very 
low, they depend on high revenues to balance their national budgets.

Michael Liebreich, at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said the fiscal 
break-even for Saudi Arabia is around $80 per barrel, meaning its 
foreign exchange reserves might sustain rock-bottom oil prices for only 
two or three years. "Russia, with a $40 a barrel fiscal break-even and 
much more diversified economy, can survive low oil prices for a decade," 
he said.

Whatever happens, the industry will never be the same again after the 
double whammy of the pandemic and price war. "The companies that emerge 
from the crisis will not be the ones that went into it," said Carbon 
Tracker's Bond. "We will see write-downs, restructuring and radical change."

Experts, including Currie at Goldman Sachs, say the climate change 
debate will almost certainly take a difference course after the crisis. 
But exactly what that looks like remains to be seen. "The question is 
how long this is all going to last, and no one really knows," said 
Kretzschmar.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/01/the-fossil-fuel-industry-is-broken-will-a-cleaner-climate-be-the-result

[Proposal for climate refugees]
Article from the journal Climate Change proposing a Climate Humanitarian 
Visa based on the climate visas issued by the US and Canada to typhoon 
victims in the Philippines.
*Climate humanitarian visa: international migration opportunities as 
post-disaster humanitarian intervention *

Denise Margaret S. Matias

*Abstract
*With global action being outpaced by climate change impacts, 
communities in climate-vulnerable countries are at increased risk of 
incurring climate-induced losses and damages. In the last few years, 
disasters from extreme weather events such as typhoons have increased 
and have breached records, with typhoon Haiyan being the strongest ever 
typhoon to make landfall. Such an event solicited global compassion and 
altruism where Canada and the USA, apart from doling out traditional 
humanitarian aid, also offered immigration relief opportunities to 
typhoon Haiyan victims who have familial connections to their residents. 
Drawing from these immigration relief interventions, this paper uses a 
sociopolitical approach in proposing a climate humanitarian visa that 
would be offered to climate change victims on the basis of transnational 
family networks and skilled labor. Noting that several countries such as 
in Europe have demographic deficits and labor shortages, such a scheme 
would benefit both climate change victims and receiving countries. To 
counter the risk of selective compassion against economically trapped 
populations, potential receiving countries could provide skills 
upgrading geared toward addressing their labor shortages through their 
existing development programs. While migration is only one strategy in a 
spectrum of responses to climate change impacts, a climate humanitarian 
visa could provide climate change victims a legal choice for mobility 
while invoking altruism, hospitality, and compassion from potential 
receiving countries, whether or not they historically cause climate change.
The article is fully accessible here: https://rdcu.be/b3eNH

[Check on Exxon - video]
*How ExxonMobil Controls Our Lives*
Mar 13, 2020
Our Changing Climate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiPWKHBR9wI

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  - April 2, 2002 *
The New York Times reports:
"After a year of urging from energy industry lobbyists, the Bush 
administration is seeking the ouster of an American scientist who for 
nearly six years has directed an international panel of hundreds of 
experts assessing global warming, several government officials have said.

"The specialist, Dr. Robert T. Watson, chief scientist of the World 
Bank, is highly regarded as an atmospheric chemist by many climate 
experts. He has held the unpaid position of chairman of the 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since the fall of 1996. Now 
his term is expiring and the State Department has chosen not to 
renominate him to head the panel, which is run under the auspices of the 
United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization.

"Dr. Watson is an outspoken advocate of the idea that human actions — 
mainly burning oil and coal — are contributing to global warming and 
must be changed to avert environmental upheavals.

"Last night, a State Department official said the administration was 
leaning toward endorsing a scientist from India, which along with other 
developing countries has been eager for a stronger role in the climate 
assessments.

"But many influential climate experts say they have written to the 
department supporting Dr. Watson."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/02/science/02CLIM.html
http://youtu.be/6NcSOUJUBfY

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