GLOBAL POLICY
The Paris climate goals demand a rapid, just transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. We’re pushing governments to lead the way by adopting policies to end oil and gas production.
OVERVIEW OF WORK
In order to achieve climate goals, governments and other decision makers must support a just and equitable move away from fossil fuels. We are pushing for precedent-setting leadership from governments to put policies in place to manage the decline of oil and gas and ensure a just transition for fossil-fuel dependent workers and communities.
Building from a growing group of first mover governments, we are pressuring for increasing numbers of national and regional governments to end new licenses and permits for oil and gas production, and to develop plans to wind down their existing production over time.
LATEST PROGRAM POSTS
At last some good news: A major new educational initiative on climate change has been launched on the Net. Called “Focus the Nation” it will involve over 1000 universities, colleges and high schools in the US in a simultaneous one-day symposia that will explore the challenge of “Stabilizing the Climate in the 21st Century”.
“Post Katrina, and with 2006 on track to be the hottest year on record, Americans are getting seriously worried about global warming”, argues Ross Gelbspan, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, and author of the book Boiling Point. “Focus the Nation will generate a critically-needed, non-partisan, national dialogue about
Hot of the heels of the two NASA reports is a further one from British scientists saying that drastic action is needed if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. The government-funded Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, the leading climate change research body, has revised upwards by a massive 50% the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that are needed by 2050.
The Independent today reports on the story we blogged on yesterday about disappearing sea-ice reported by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. However it is even worse – another NASA study – this time by the Goddard Space Flight Centre, in Maryland, shows that the perennial ice melting rate, has also accelerated rapidly.
As the Independent says: “If climate change is not checked, the Arctic ice will all be gone by 2070, and people will be able to sail to the North Pole. But if these new rates of melting are maintained, the Arctic ice will all be gone decades before
A Nasa satellite has documented “startling” changes in Arctic sea ice cover between 2004 and 2005. The extent of “perennial” ice - which remains all year round - declined by 14%, losing an area the size of Pakistan or Turkey.
The Arctic is now warming about twice as fast as the global average. September 2005 saw the lowest recorded area of ice cover since 1978, when satellite records became available.
LATEST PROGRAM RESEARCH
This new report, “Public Enemies: Assessing MDB and G20 international finance institutions’ energy finance” looks at G20 country and MDB traceable international public finance for fossil fuels from 2020-2022 and finds they are still backing at least USD 47 billion per year in oil, gas, and coal projects.
This briefing assesses Shell’s fossil fuel extraction plans in light of Shell's appeal of a Dutch court verdict requiring the company to take responsibility for its climate pollution. Our analysis shows that Shell continues to plan for levels of oil and gas production and investment that undermine the world’s chances of curtailing climate disaster.
The countries that produce oil and gas from the North Sea (Norway, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark) rank among the countries with the greatest economic capacity and responsibility to rapidly phase out extraction, and to finance just transitions to renewable energy solutions domestically and abroad.