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In 2023 for the first time, CO2 emissions produced from Canada’s fossilfuel exports surpassed a billion tonnes, at 1,030 million tonnes, significantly eclipsing the country’s domestic emissions estimate of 702 million tonnes for the same year.
The future trajectories are based on different scenarios, such as versions of the future where the world comes together to take action and phase out fossilfuels, or versions where fossilfuel production continues throughout this century. 2C above the preindustrial average.
In the study, we found that political power dynamics shape international negotiations, that the ParisAgreement temperature goal doesn’t fully account for the dangers of sea level rise, and that climate justice requires fully considering diverse views and experiences of climate change.
When diplomacy needs backup, countries turn to resolve their disputes at the ICJ, the United Nations’ principal judicial organ, to set the tone for international law. As an advisory body, the court provides legal opinions on international law questions. What is an advisory opinion?
According to the Energy Information Agency , South Korea’s power sector is heavily reliant on fossilfuels. Two thirds of generation capacity is based on fossilfuels, split evenly between coal and natural gas, with 17% nuclear, and 14% hydro and other renewables. 50% coal, 26% gas, and 25% nuclear.
For years, fossilfuel companies have socialized the costs of their pollution while privatizing the benefits. Since local and state governments are on the frontlines of paying for worsening wildfires, they should also be on the leading edge of holding fossilfuel companies accountable. Source: YouTube.
Some events last week sent a strong signal that the tide is turning against fossilfuels. To paraphrase Churchill, this may not be beginning of the end for fossilfuels, but at least it is the end of the beginning of the campaign against them. Each of the events standing alone would have been noteworthy.
Part 1 focused on discussions on applicable law, and the no-harm rule. Vanuatu and the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) asserted that these legal consequences are governed by the general law of State responsibility. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Seas (ITLOS) published its advisory opinion in May 2024.
As I prepare to attend the UN’s 28 th annual Conference of the Parties (COP28 ), I’ve been thinking a lot about the connection between the UN climate talks and litigation, especially in light of the stark reality that parties to the 2015 ParisAgreement are falling short on key milestones leading up to the next month’s meeting.
Drawing on research by the Union of Concerned Scientists and others, the commission report found that fossilfuel companies fully understood their products’ impact on climate as early as 1965, when their own scientists discovered them. The commission’s trailblazing work is only the beginning.
The dangerous impacts of a warming, fossil-fuel dependent world span from wildfires capable of destroying entire towns to cancer-causing air pollution that afflicts the next generation. The UNFCC ParisAgreement , for example, proposed that the global community would work together to limit the Earth’s temperature warming by 1.5°C
Background Japan has heavily relied on the use of fossilfuels for its power generation. According to the Japanese Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, the countrys fossilfuel dependency was 83.2% This blog post provides an overview of those cases and the broader landscape of climate litigation in Japan.
Technically this shall be included in an amendment to the proposed Climate Law. This change shall facilitate two long-term obligations: achieving a climate-neutral Europe by 2050 and improving Europe`s contribution to the ParisAgreement. Nonetheless, we are already including them into our calculations.
Mexico’s climate commitment for 2030 under the ParisAgreement calls for cutting emissions 22%, cutting black carbon by half, and achieving net-zero deforestation. AMLO has come under criticism for his commitment to fossilfuel production and refining in Mexico.
There are several problems with this false dichotomy: Entrepreneurs behind private startups like Make Sunset are wildly different from the scientists and environmental law experts who study geoengineering. degree Celsius targets set by the ParisAgreement, what other policies are available? If we overshoot the 1.5
A 2022 Rainforest Action Network repor t found that “fossilfuel financing from the world’s 60 largest banks has reached USD $4.6 trillion in the six years since the adoption of the ParisAgreement, with $742 billion in fossilfuel financing in 2021 alone.” The biggest US bank investors in fossilfuels? “At
SSP5, a world of fossil-fuel based economic growth, in which global population peaks and then declines later in this century. C goal of the Parisagreement. SSP3, a world of surging nationalism and regional rivalry , with population growth low in developed countries and high in the developing world. The SSP2-4.5
This is in total opposition to the US commitment under the ParisAgreement to achieve a 50-52 percent emissions reduction below 2005 levels by 2030, and net-zero by 2050. This year’s projections are a bit grim. EIA also recently reported that US coal exports increased 23% between 2020 and 2021.
Lawyers, bar associations, and law societies have an important but not fully recognized role to play in achieving the net zero goal in the ParisAgreement. Climate Change as an Increasingly Common Feature of Law Practice Climate change is no longer an issue of concern only to environmental and energy lawyers. In the U.S.,
Canada promised to cut its greenhouse gas emissions after the 2016 ParisAgreement. It was part of the global agreement where 195 countries all agreed to reduce their emissions, and Canada has set this promise into law. However, we have heard that the government wants to label fossilfuels as green under this new system.
Central to these questions is the role of fossilfuels, which have long been seen as the backbone of economic growth, but now threaten to interfere with international climate goals. Achieving that goal will require a dramatic cut in fossilfuel development. This will, however, come at a cost in terms of climate change.
The joint statement from the recent G7 environment and energy ministers’ conference in Japan suggests there is ambition for action in some areas – on climate-related finance and investments and on eliminating toxic chemicals, for example – but less on eliminating fossilfuel subsidies and very little on eliminating plastic pollution.
Japan’s dependency on fossilfuel s had been slightly declining until 2010. But the country changed course as a result of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, which led to the forced shutdown of nuclear power plants and greater reliance on fossilfuels. Civil law cases. In September 2017, in Sendai Citizens v.
The annual number of climate-related lawsuits filed against the world’s largest fossilfuel producing companies has nearly tripled since the ParisAgreement was adopted in 2015, according to a recent report from Oil Change International and Zero Carbon Analytics.
Last year, climate negotiators in Glasgow finalized the ParisAgreement rulebook for international cooperation through carbon markets, clearing the way for the expansion of emissions trading and carbon pricing worldwide. California has perhaps the most comprehensive protocols on offsets in the world, but this has not quieted concerns.
The court concluded that, based on current climate law and wider scientific consensus, it cannot to determine a concrete minimum CO 2 reduction target for any specific company or specific sector. This leads to an important distinction between fossilfuels specifically produced or merely traded by Shell, as discussed in more detail below.
In 2019 and again in 2020 , Shell found that CAPP was out of step with Shell’s principles because of lack of support for the ParisAgreement and climate policies such as carbon pricing. Shell “supports” the ParisAgreement on climate change , limiting warming to 1.5 and Canada achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
This official inner circle is now doing the business of the three separate international treaties in force for climate change: the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), the 1992 Kyoto Protocol (Yes, it still exists and is in force, although the United States is not a party), and the 2015 ParisAgreement.
We need to rapidly transition financial support away from fossilfuels and towards the clean energy transition” said Alan Andrews, Ecojustice climate program director. Ecojustice uses the power of the law to defend nature, combat climate change, and fight for a healthy environment.
While excluding new fossilfuel expansion from the sustainability label is obvious, including existing ‘natural’ methane gas projects in the taxonomy in any way would be problematic, given that studies show that gas – when accounting for its extraction, cooling, and transport – is more polluting for the climate than coal.
Solar PV Project in Cuba (Photo credit: IRENA ) Today, the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) jointly published a new report titled Building a Cleaner, More Resilient Energy System in Cuba: Opportunities and Challenges. Cuba’s power system is currently heavily reliant on fossilfuels.
Presumably Dagsvik and Moen are used to this kind of model, but they seem to be inexperienced with the models used for weather and climate, which on the other hand are based on the laws of physics. On the other hand, we expect to see the effect of greenhouse gases when we look at the temperature averaged over the entire globe.
Contrary to climate science and the ParisAgreement, all eight assessed companies plan to increase fossilfuel production. It finds they are all on track to increase their oil and gas production in Canada, rather than planning a fair transition away from fossilfuels that are fuelling the climate crisis.
Although criticized for half measures and loopholes, blamed in part on the influence of petrostates, the agreement reached at the conference should be welcomed as a significant step in the move away from fossilfuels. But it notes Parties are off track when it comes to meeting their ParisAgreement goals.
This includes developing and implementing a transition plan to phase out fossilfuels, designed by and for workers and communities whose livelihoods will be disrupted by the transition. – Respect Indigenous rights and law, working in a nation-to-nation partnership. Alternatives to Line 5 exist.
However, Canada is failing to address a key root of the climate crisis — the continued flow of capital by Canadian financial institutions into fossilfuel development and extraction. Canada’s financial institutions are among the largest funders of fossilfuels in the world, and continue to underinvest in clean energy.
The CPP doesn’t fully disclose our holdings, it’s still investing billions of dollars in fossilfuels, and it doesn’t seem to have a credible climate plan. Pension funds are facing increasing pressure to create and implement investment strategies aligned with the goals of the ParisAgreement. billion AUM. Andrea Reimer.
Bill C-50 is a necessary tool to set Canadian workers up for success in a low-carbon economy Countries around the world are choosing to ditch fossilfuels, like oil, gas and coal, to use renewable energy and increase the energy efficiency of homes, cars and factories. Fossilfuel workers are also far from the only ones impacted.
The relevant CFPP owner has a ParisAgreement-aligned transition plan. beyond those that have already been signed by December 2023). This transition plan needs to be independently verified or acknowledged by internationally recognised bodies or programs.
In the 2015 ParisAgreement , Article 8 acknowledged the importance of L&D and the accompanying decision 1/CP.21 This post is based on work done in the Fall 2022 UCLA Emmett Institute’s Clinic on International Climate Change Law and Policy, with contributions by Veronika Bagi, Karen Meacham, Wietske Merison, and Melissa Rodrigues.
There was no progress on getting national governments to state stronger ambitions in their NDCs, in the additional specification of global targets, or even in non-binding language regarding intentions to cut fossilfuels. C ambition from Paris. There was even, briefly, alarm that the COP might fail to re-affirm the 1.5°C
As per the World Investment Report 2023, much of the growth in international investment in renewable energy, which has nearly tripled since the adoption of the ParisAgreement in 2015, was concentrated in developed countries. But the problem is that as of today, such instruments or institutions hardly exist.
At COP28 , on 9 December, India’s environment and climate change minister Bhupender Yadav affirmed the country’s “trust and confidence” in the ParisAgreement , whilst highlighting the country’s achievements in emissions reduction. Fossilfuels remain necessary”, Jairaj says.
The demand statement focuses on upholding Indigenous rights and respecting Indigenous knowledge, bold and ambitious climate action (including phasing out fossilfuels and guaranteeing a just transition to a sustainable clean energy economy), protecting and restoring nature and establishing environmental rights in Canada.
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