A small milestone. As the sun rose this morning, our household solar power system generated its Thirtieth MegaWatt since being installed just on four years ago.
The irony is not lost on me, watching my energy consumption fall, but a power bill rise…
The report finds that companies have been ‘gold-plating’ financial assets and passing those costs onto consumers.
[ Source: The Australia Institute: Electricity Costs Pge 5.]The report goes on to state:
Too often we assume that private and corporatised state-owned corporations are operating efficiently. In the real world such as in the Australian economy where the checks and balances are imperfect and companies exercise considerable power…
We think there is ample evidence of inefficiency when we examine the labour force and the asset base of the companies involved in supplying electricity.
[Source: TAI Report Electricity Costs: Page 8 ]In summary, the report suggests:
The examination of electricity costs and price setting suggest that Australians are paying much more than they should be if their regulators were guided by considerations of the most efficient delivery of electricity.
The daily average concentration of carbon dioxide in the air that day at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory was 399.68 parts per million. On November 12 it rose to 401.64 ppm, and it’s quite possible that we’ll never see another day in our lives with the daily Mauna Loa CO2 reading below 400 ppm.
That’s quite possibly the event-horizon of an Epoch whose membership is compulsory yet no-one wishes to [or realises] they have crossed.
Certainly the single largest public-policy issue. An existential challenge that appears to [still] evade definition.
Two Wednesdays ago, we sailed past a carbon milestone of perhaps geological scale. With CO2 levels above 400 ppm, atmospheric carbon in our era is now higher than it’s been in at least one million years—and perhaps in 25 million years. One of the world’s most respected climatologists now says that November 11 could be the last day of our lifetimes in which atmospheric carbon stays below 400 parts per million.
Ralph Keeling, the climatologist responsible for the “Keeling Curve” and the very Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego who directs the program which oversees the Mauna Loa readings.
[Weekly Observation Mauna Loa ] and
[ Full Record Mauna Loa ]Professor Keeling notes:
“It’s too early to be 100 percent certain, but I agree that it’s starting to look like we are already over 400 ppm for this year, with the last daily and weekly values below 400 ppm occurring earlier this month,”
According to the UK Met Office their predictions now suggest that the global temperature in 2015 will, in all probability, be at least 1°C warmer than the preindustrial average.
CO2 Emissions modelling
[Source: Vox.com – How the world failed on Climate Change ]Henson points out that:
This would put our planet halfway to the 2°C warming that’s long been viewed by many scientists and policy experts as a level that significantly raises the odds of major climate disruption.
A brief video from the journal Nature, released last Thursday, serves as a quick guide to the origin and significance of the 2°C goal.
NOAA
In the same time period, NOAA released their latest global summary.
NOAA reports: The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for October 2015 was the highest for October in the 136-year period of record, at 0.98°C (1.76°F) above the 20th century average of 14.0°C (57.1°F).
This marked the sixth consecutive month a monthly global temperature record has been broken and was also the greatest departure from average for any month in the 1630 months of recordkeeping, surpassing the previous record high departure set just last month by 0.13°F (0.07°C).
The October temperature is currently increasing at an average rate of 0.06°C (0.11°F) per decade.
This thing is still growing and it’s definitely warmer than it was in 1997,” said Bill Patzert, climatologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. As far as the temperature readings go, “it’s now bypassed the previous champ of the modern satellite era…
In a small but significant manner, the City of Melbourne, in its City of Melbourne Clean Energy Proposal, has formally affirmed, in a unanimous vote of all eleven councillors;
to not directly investing in any fossil fuel or fossil fuel aligned companies into the future.
As I have said many times, #strandedassets is and will increasingly become, the primary policy issue confronting advanced/modern economies. Harmonizing investment pipelines with infrastructure and demographic planning requires considerable focus and management expertise that relies on bi-partisan long-term commitments. Yes, I know.
A considerable challenge.
COP21 will be a telling milestone in assessing the “readiness for transition…”
Energy, Employment,Education, Environment, engagement in civil-society, Security: the policy trajectories of all these domains require intelligent, rational and collaborative approaches based on the fundamental policy driver: Climate.
Melbourne City’s proposal contains these five components:
Reaffirms its commitment to clean energy through its investments.
Notes that the City of Melbourne has no direct investment (shareholdings) in any fossil fuel companies or fossil fuel aligned companies.
Commits to not directly investing in any fossil fuel or fossil fuel aligned companies into the future. This commitment will be reflected in the City of Melbourne’s Investment Policy when it is next reviewed.
Requests management write to the Trustees of Council’s default superannuation fund Vision Super and request a Fossil Free Investment option be available to members.
Resolves that when the transactional banking services are next tendered, respondents will be requested to complete a questionnaire on their exposure and support to the fossil fuel sector. These responses are to be taken into consideration when deciding to award the transactional banking services contract.
Of further interest is the Council’s wish to both introduce a fossil-fuel-free superannuation option for staff by influencing major Superannuation fund managers and seeking to audit and screen all future Banking transactions for exposure to “fossil-fuel-aligned companies”.
The growing momentum in the divestment of fossil fuels is significant. Some suggest investments to the value of $2.6 Trillion has been re-allocated to date.
The challenge for political leaders and community alike is to de-couple from what Barry Jones once called the “rise of managerialism” and begin to think and plan… “in decades, not twitter moments”.
We must all search for the ”shock of recognition” which enables us to find ourselves, expanding our understanding both of the universe and of each other
If the existential threat of anthropogenic climate change is not sufficient to provide for the “shock of recognition” to both the Apollonian and Dionysian amongst amongst those that profess to “serve the public”, then I am not sure what can.
The “public good”, collides with “private benefit” .
![[Weekly Observation Mauna Loa ]](http://www.billcoppinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/keelingcurve_one_week-640x384.png)
![[ Full Record Mauna Loa ]](http://www.billcoppinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Keelingcurve_full_record-640x384.png)
