GWPF | 17 Nov 2014

Economics Minister: “Is it clear that the 2020 target is no longer viable.”

The German coalition government is planning to withdraw from its 2020 climate change goals. Notwithstanding public protest, Federal Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) has abandoned the requirement of cutting 40 percent of CO2 emissions compared to 1990 levels by 2020. “It’s clear that the [2020 CO2] target is no longer viable,” said the vice-chancellor according to information obtained by SPIEGEL, adding: “We cannot exit from coal power overnight.” —Der Spiegel, 16 November 2014

Germany’s Vice Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, has indicated that the country will abandon its commitment to reducing CO2 emissions by 40 percent by 2020, from a 1990 base level. In doing so he has won the ongoing clash with his own environmental minister Barbara Hendricks over energy policy, telling her that he will tolerate no further resistance to the change of direction, according to Der Spiegel. –Donna Rachel Edmunds, Breitbart, 17 November 2014

German chancellor Angela Merkel has urged all nations to commit to cutting carbon dioxide emissions, warning that climate change does not respect borders. It follows Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s snub of a call from US President Barack Obama to invest in a climate change fund. —Sky News, 17 November 2014

Federal Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) says he is convinced that Germany can reach its 2020 climate targets without phasing out coal power generation. “We can achieve the 40 percent,” Gabriel claimed on Sunday in Berlin. “Climate protection vs economic success or economic success vs climate change – we must not let that happen.” Earlier, Der Spiegel had quoted Gabriel from an internal memo as saying: “Is it clear that the [2020] target is no longer viable.” The target is a 40 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared to 1990. According to expert opinion the target can only be achieved with a gradual shutdown of old coal plants. –- Deutsche Press Agentur, 17 November 2014

Germany’s flagship green energy policy is in tatters, according to a new report by the consultancy firm McKinsey which says many of its goals are “no longer realistic”. Angela Merkel’s government has committed to cut CO2 emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. To achieve that, McKinsey argues, Germany would have to cut emissions by an average of 3.5 per cent a year. But so far, they have only fallen at an average of 0.7 per cent a year, leaving Germany so far behind it would have to increase emissions cuts by a factor of five to reach its target on time. “Despite the massive expansion of renewable energies, achieving the key objectives of the energy revolution in Germany by 2020 is no longer realistic” says the report. —Justin Huggler in Berlin, The Daily Telegraph, 2 September 2014

Germany’s environment ministry has admitted the country is likely to fall short of its future greenhouse gas emissions targets by seven percent. Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks has said that Germany is on track to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by just 33 percent in comparison to 1990 levels by the year 2020. This falls short of the country’s previously-stated aim of 40 percent. —Deutsche Welle, 23 July 2014

It is a dangerous thing to be an enemy of President Obama’s. It can be fatal to be his friend. Substantial passages of the Brisbane speech were designed by Obama or his speech writers to damage the Australian government. Given the Abbott government has given the US every support in the Middle East, done everything it can to sustain the US presence in Asia, and agreed with US objections, made by Obama himself, its capricious and reckless treatment by Obama emphasises Washington’s tin ear with allies, a problem it has had for the whole of Obama’s second term. –Greg Sheridan, The Australian, 17 November 2014

Almost everything you’re told about Barack Obama’s “breakthrough” deal with China on global warming is a con. But, God, listen to the spin. President Obama told ecstatic students in Brisbane on Saturday that last week’s deal to limit carbon dioxide emissions would help save our Great Barrier Reef and “I want that there 50 years from now”. Red China was going green, agreed the warmist ABC, since “the most concrete target is to have 20 per cent of China’s energy produced from renewable sources by 2030”. Hear all that? Every claim is actually false, fake or overblown, as so often with the global warming scare. China won’t cut emissions for another 16 years, and Congress will oppose Obama. And reality check: Labor and the Greens actually oppose the technologies the US and China most rely upon to cut emissions. Oh, and still the planet refuses to warm, for all Obama’s happy yammer.  –Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun, November 17, 2014

In its annual World Energy Outlook, the Paris-based the International Energy Agency forecast that global energy demand will increase 37% by 2040. Though global resources are adequate to meet the growth in consumption, significant investment and political action are needed to ensure the resources are developed, the IEA said. Investment of $900 billion a year in upstream oil and gas development is needed by the 2030s to meet projected demand, according to the International Energy Agency. –Sarah Kent, The Wall Street Journal, 12 November 2014

1) Germany To Abandon 2020 Climate Change Targets – Breitbart, 17 November 2014

2) Germany’s Flagship Green Energy Policy ‘In Tatters’ – The Daily Telegraph, 2 September 2014

3) Reminder: Germany Unlikely To Meet Carbon Reduction Targets For 2020 – Deutsche Welle, 23 July 2014

4) With Friends Like That: Obama Attacks America’s Key Ally Down Under – The Australian, 17 November 2014

5) Andrew Bolt: China, US Climate Deal Is A Load Of Hot Air – Herald Sun, November 17, 2014

6) Forget Obama’s Green PR Stunt: Global Energy Demand To Increase By 40% – The Wall Street Journal, 12 November 2014

 

1) Germany To Abandon 2020 Climate Change Targets
Breitbart, 17 November 2014

Donna Rachel Edmunds

Germany’s Vice Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, has indicated that the country will abandon its commitment to reducing CO2 emissions by 40 percent by 2020, from a 1990 base level. In doing so he has won the ongoing clash with his own environmental minister Barbara Hendricks over energy policy, telling her that he will tolerate no further resistance to the change of direction, according to Der Spiegel.

The target has been in doubt for some time, not least because Gabriel, a former environment minister himself and current minister for economic affairs and energy, is known to be supportive of the coal industry. According to the Environment Ministry, Germany would have to find a way of cutting emissions by between 62 and 100 million tonnes of CO2 every year for the next sixteen years in order to reach the target. Shutting down coal power stations would only contribute 40 million tonnes to that target.
“It’s clear that the [2020 CO2] target is no longer viable,” Gabriel said, adding: “We cannot exit from coal power overnight.” Earlier this year Gabriel told Spiegel: “It is an illusion to believe that Germany could simultaneously move away from both nuclear and coal energy”.

However Barbara Hendriks, a fellow member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP) along with Gabriel, has been battling him on the issue, insisting that meeting the target is merely a matter of willpower. In September she told Spiegel: “We want to lead in the world [on emissions reduction]. We will not reach the 40 percent target if we do not take further action [including shutting coal plants].”

Gabriel, who is the current Chairman of the SDP has now put his foot down on the matter. In a confidential conversation, he is reported to have told her that he will not tolerate any more dissent over the dropped target. “It doesn’t work like that”, the labour leader is understood to have said.

But Hendriks is not the only dissenting voice. A number of eco-’experts’ within the party have written a joint letter to Gabriel urging him not to u-turn on the targets. Erhard Eppler, Volker Hauff and Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker have all urged the SDP ministers within the coalition government not to abandon current climate targets. “This national target is important because the EU climate and energy targets for 2030 adopted at the end of October are, unfortunately, far too unambitious and rely on efficiency measures,” they have written.

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2) Germany’s Flagship Green Energy Policy ‘In Tatters’
The Daily Telegraph, 2 September 2014

Justin Huggler in Berlin

Germany’s flagship green energy policy is in tatters, according to a new report by the consultancy firm McKinsey which says many of its goals are “no longer realistic”.

Angela Merkel was hailed as the ‘Klimakanzlerin’, or ‘Climate Chancellor’ in 2010 when her government placed Germany at the forefront of the battle against climate change and announced ambitious plans to move to renewable energy sources.

But the McKinsey report says Germany is so far behind its key commitment to cut CO2 emissions that it is no longer realistically achievable.

Mrs Merkel’s government has committed to cut CO2 emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. To achieve that, McKinsey argues, Germany would have to cut emissions by an average of 3.5 per cent a year.

But so far, they have only fallen at an average of 0.7 per cent a year, leaving Germany so far behind it would have to increase emissions cuts by a factor of five to reach its target on time.

“Despite the massive expansion of renewable energies, achieving the key objectives of the energy revolution in Germany by 2020 is no longer realistic” says the report.

“If you can’t achieve your own targets, you can hardly be a credible advocate for stricter CO2 cuts in Europe or elsewhere in the world,” said a comment piece in Welt newspaper.

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3) Reminder: Germany Unlikely To Meet Carbon Reduction Targets For 2020
Deutsche Welle, 23 July 2014

Germany’s environment ministry believes it’s unlikely Germany will meet its 2020 greenhouse gas reduction goals. They say the country will come up seven percent short, but critics say it could be even worse.

Germany’s environment ministry has admitted the country is likely to fall short of its future greenhouse gas emissions targets by seven percent. Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks has said that Germany is on track to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by just 33 percent in comparison to 1990 levels by the year 2020. This falls short of the country’s previously-stated aim of 40 percent.

Greens parliamentarian Bärbel Höhn, says that the goals aren’t being met because Germany hasn’t done enough to make climate protection a priority.

“Angela Merkel used to be the climate queen of Europe,” Höhn told DW. “But since Germany held the EU Presidency [in 2007], not enough has happened.”

Höhn says that initial plans to develop renewable energy have been scaled back, and that Germany is continuing to run brown coal power plants without any plan for phasing them out.

“Germany has achieved a lot in the areas of climate protection,” Höhn said. “But we have stopped leading by example in the last few years. The same can be said of the EU too.”

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4) With Friends Like That: Obama Attacks America’s Key Ally Down Under
The Australian, 17 November 2014

Greg Sheridan

It is a dangerous thing to be an enemy of President Obama’s. It can be fatal to be his friend.  

It’s a strange way to treat a friend but it is all of a piece, sadly, with Obama’s presidential style, especially as the power ebbs from him in the dying days of his reign.

The damage may not be long-lasting because the US President’s remarks bore little relation to anything he can deliver or will do. Instead, they reprise the most ineffably capricious and inconsequential moments in the Obama presidency: grand gestures, soaring visions, which never actually get implemented in the real world.

Obama went out of his way to imply, in the most politically damaging fashion he could, that Australia’s efforts on climate change were negligible and compared poorly with America’s. In fact, Australia’s efforts on greenhouse gas reduction are almost identical with those of the US. As some American journalists observed, it is not a speech Obama would have given at home, where his authority is gone and nobody buys the moonshine any more.

The Obama speech should not, however, overshadow what has been a very successful G20 summit in Brisbane. Of course, the idea that this summit will add 2.1 per cent growth to the world economy is absolute baloney. It is a rare example of the Abbott government, which has a generally admirable tendency to deal with hard truths in international affairs, blowing its own cloud of smoke. […]

Those parts of Obama’s speech that dealt with security, where he was echoing bipartisan US military policy and reinforcing decades-old alliance commitments, were solid, clear and reassuring. But substantial passages of the Brisbane speech were designed by Obama or his speech writers to damage the government.

Given the Abbott government has given the US every support in the Middle East, done everything it can to sustain the US presence in Asia, and agreed with US objections, made by Obama himself, to the governance structures of China’s proposed infrastructure bank such that Canberra has decided for the moment not to join, its capricious and reckless treatment by Obama emphasises Washington’s tin ear with allies, a problem it has had for the whole of Obama’s second term.

In reality, the US is in no position to lecture Australia on climate change. In the period covered by the first Kyoto agreement, for example, the US committed, amid great fanfare, to a 7 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. It recorded a 9 per cent increase. And support for Kyoto was so weak in the congress that the US never ratified the treaty. Australia likewise never ratified the Kyoto treaty, but actually came in 6 per cent below our Kyoto targets.

Given Australia has grown its economy and its population faster than most Western nations over recent years, ours is a more-than-respectable performance.

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5) Andrew Bolt: China, US Climate Deal Is A Load Of Hot Air
Herald Sun, November 17, 2014

ALMOST everything you’re told about Barack Obama’s “breakthrough” deal with China on global warming is a con.

But, God, listen to the spin.

President Obama told ecstatic students in Brisbane on Saturday that last week’s deal to limit carbon dioxide emissions would help save our Great Barrier Reef and “I want that there 50 years from now”.

Greens leader Christine Milne insisted it showed the Prime Minister Tony Abbott “is completely out of step with the rest of the world”.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said it recognised “human activity is already changing the world’s climate system”, and “we most certainly need to address climate change as the presidents of China and the United States have done”.

Red China was going green, agreed the warmist ABC, since “the most concrete target is to have 20 per cent of China’s energy produced from renewable sources by 2030”.

Hear all that?

Every claim is actually false, fake or overblown, as so often with the global warming scare.

Here are the five biggest falsehoods told about this “breakthrough”.

First, Labor is wrong: this deal proves nothing about global warming. In fact, there has still been no warming of the atmosphere for 16 years, contrary to almost every prediction.

Forget the excuse that the missing heat is hiding in the deep ocean. NASA researchers last month said a new study had found the “waters of Earth’s deep ocean have not warmed measurably since 2005”.

Nor, incidentally, have we seen the biennial bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef predicted in 1999 by Australian alarmist Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Second, this is not a real deal.

China, already the world’s biggest emitter, is actually promising little more than what it always planned — to let emissions keep soaring until 2030 as it makes its people richer.

China will cap its emissions only in 2030 — the never-never — when its electricity supply is deployed and its population is set to plummet.
In exchange, Obama promises to cut US emissions by 26 per cent of 2005 levels by 2025.

But Obama’s term ends in two years and the Republicans who now control Congress say they’ll try to block his deal.

Republican Mitch McConnell, the new majority leader in the Senate, said he was “particularly distressed by the deal”, which “requires the Chinese to do nothing at all for 16 years”.
And, to add to the phoniness, the deal is neither binding nor enforceable.

Third falsehood? No, this deal doesn’t show the Abbott Government is out of step.

The Government’s own planned cuts to emissions — 5 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020 — are not wildly behind the US ones over a similar time span. If anyone is out of step it’s Labor, since China and the US plan to cut their emissions not with a Labor-style carbon tax but with Liberal-style direct action policies.

Fourth falsehood: China did not promise to get 20 per cent of its energy from renewable sources, as many journalists report. The deal instead says that 20 per cent will come from “non-fossil fuels”, which in China’s case includes nuclear power.

Indeed, China plans to have at least five times more nuclear power by 2030, with Sun Qin, chairman of the China National Nuclear Corp, confirming earlier this year that “nuclear plants will play an important role in … raising the proportion of energy produced by non-fossil fuel”.
And the fifth falsehood?

The Greens and Labor don’t actually want us to follow the lead of the US and China at all.

Not when it comes to how those promises are meant to be delivered.

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6) Reality Check: Global Energy Demand To Increase By 40%
The Wall Street Journal, 12 November 2014

Sarah Kent

Investment of $900 billion a year in upstream oil and gas development is needed by the 2030s to meet projected demand, according to the International Energy Agency.