Carbon Economy

We have this at Bloomie: Financing options open to Australia’s coal operators dwindled further after another of the country’s largest banks said it would end almost all investment in thermal mines and power stations by 2030.

The new energy issues paper released by the Minister for the Gas Cartel, Keith Pitt, has produced a debate as devoid of ideas and facts as the paper itself.

That is the question confronting every Fake Green today.

Via Albo at the AFR: Our transmission system was built for a time when solar panels ran pocket calculators, not the one in four households which have rooftop solar.

Via ABC: Melting of the Greenland ice sheet has hit a rate unmatched in the last 12,000 years and is accelerating, scientists have confirmed.

Via The Fake Left: Australia’s resistance to a mid-century net zero emissions target is likely to become increasingly unsustainable after China surprised global leaders by pledging it would reach “carbon neutrality” before 2060, climate analysts and advocates say.

Via Dr Steve Keen, cross-posted from Taylor and Francis: ABSTRACT Forecasts by economists of the economic damage from climate change have been notably sanguine, compared to warnings by scientists about damage to the biosphere.

Via…well, everybody, today: The Australian Climate Roundtable (ACR) is a forum that brings together leading organisations from the business, farming, investment, union, social welfare and environmental sectors.

Via FTAlphaville comes Michael Pettis,  finance professor at Peking University and a senior fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center.

Via Nature: Projections of global-scale extreme sea levels and resulting episodic coastal flooding over the 21st Century Ebru Kirezci, Ian R.

Here it is from Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), that is, global central banks including the RBA: This modeling is next to useless of course.

Via Bernard Keane at Crikey: After the second hottest year on record globally, the hottest year on record in Australia, our second hottest summer ever after 2018-19, an unprecedentedly catastrophic summer of bushfires and record-breaking Arctic and Antarctic temperatures, Labor has opted to, in effect, surrender on climate to the denialists of the Coalition.

Via The Australian: China’s embassy in Australia has taken aim at Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s call for the communist nation to show more transparency over the coronavirus pandemic.

Via The Guardian: The city of Wagga Wagga has moved to formally sever ties with its sister cities in China, based on a report that claims the country’s regime is responsible for “death and destruction” from the coronavirus outbreak.

From a deeply awry Scott Morrion at the AFR yesterday: Scott Morrison has ruled out a fiscal stimulus package as the government announced that the economic effect of the coronavirus would be worse than that of the bushfires and all but conceded the forecast budget surplus had gone.

Via the AFR: A national royal commission into Australia’s unprecedented summer bushfire crisis will consider natural disaster preparedness and coordination between state and federal governments.

Via ZH: Yes, in the sixth edition of its diagnostic criteria released Wednesday for covid-19, the National Health Commission has undone what it did just one week earlier, and has eliminated the distinction between how cases would be classified in Hubei province and other regions.

Via Reneweconomy: Victoria has announced a dramatic intervention – and set the stage for an interesting COAG meeting of state energy ministers next month – after announcing a split from national electricity rules in a bid to fast-track urgent grid upgrades and to unlock more large-scale renewables and encourage more big batteries.

Via The Guardian: Australia’s bushfire crisis has caused a spike in concern about the environment, a hit to the popularity of the Coalition and Scott Morrison and a drop in support for new coalmines, even among Coalition voters.

At The Australian comes the reality: Scott Morrison is caught between an immovable object and an irresistible force.

It never ceases to amaze.