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New financing arrangements to encourage green energy growth will help Indonesia facilitate the transition from coal to renewables. But concerns arise around loan instruments and interest payment conditions.

Theme To properly implement climate change mitigation policies, it is crucial to understand the interaction between these policies and people's behaviour, both at the individual and the social levels. Doing so leads to specific recommendations that can improve policy acceptability. Summary Based on the Elcano Royal Institute's 2019 survey on the attitudes of Spanish citizens […]
La entrada Four lessons on the interaction between climate change mitigation policies and social behaviour se publicó primero en Elcano Royal Institute.

In a transformative moment for European and global climate litigation, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled today that the state has a positive duty to adopt, and effectively implement in practice, regulations and measures capable of mitigating the existing and potentially irreversible future effects of climate change. In Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland ("KlimaSeniorinnen"), the Court held that by failing to put in place a domestic regulatory framework for climate change mitigation, the Swiss government violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the right to respect for private and family life. The judgment is a milestone for human rights protection.

Climate change is an existential concern for countries across the Middle East and North Africa. Yet as governments invest in climate mitigation and adaptation, the specific impacts of a warming climate on women are often overlooked.

When talking about the impacts of climate change, we mostly hear about changes to land and the planet's surface or atmosphere. However, most of the warming is going into the oceans where a lot of ecosystem changes are also occurring.

This update includes a couple of info graphics and charts as well as a video from an ocean and climate scientist that explains this further.

Read full article: Climate Change Affects Biodiversity

Apparently we're to have less Net Zero. Or later. Or something at least:Rishi Sunak is facing a growing Tory backlash over plans to water down his key net zero policies, with MPs saying it would be "the greatest mistake of his premiership".Bans on petrol cars and oil boilers in the next decade are among the green pledges that could be loosened under the Prime Minister's plan to meet the 2050 net zero target in a "better, more proportionate way".Ahead of a major speech this week, he admitted that the Government has "not been honest about costs and trade-offs" of net zero.As the actual economic report - that Stern Review - says we shouldn't have an emissions target anyway. As the Nobel Laureate on the subject points out, Bill Nordhaus, we shouldn't have an emissions target. Because that's the wrong way to incentivise the innovation necessary to gain less climate change. We need to use prices and the market, not bureaucratic dictat.But OK, everyone's decided, wrongly, to use a target instead. As we've pointed out before, they're still getting it wrong even if we allow them that pass. For the economics here is terribly simple. There are costs of allowing climate change to happen. There are costs of stopping climate change happening. The costs we don't have to carry by not stopping it are therefore benefits of allowing climate change to happen. Equally, a benefit of stopping climate change is not having to bear the costs of climate change happening. This is obvious. So is it also obvious that there's a fairly delicate dance between those two sets of costs and benefits. We wish to optimise the outcome, maximise human utility over time. That means bearing the least cost we possibly can while gaining the largest benefits possible. Again, all entirely obvious.That delicate dance then changes when the costs of action change relative to the costs of inaction. We're just finding out that offshore wind power is three to five times more expensive than we were told. So, as we've noted, we desire less wind power in our mix.But we're also now being told the true costs of everything planned in emissions reduction. Those costs are higher than we had been led to expect. Therefore - and entirely rationally - we should be agreeing to have more climate change. Prices have changed to the correct answer is different. Anyone not arguing for less climate mitigation in the face of rising prices is therefore wrong.

Climate change requires comprehensive global strategies for mitigation and adaptation. Armed forces must contribute. By necessity, efforts to fight climate change focus on reducing emissions. But militaries across the globe, with their significant emissions and ...

by Fenja De Silva-Schmidt How to mobilize citizens, politicians and companies for climate action? Often, knowledge about climate change – or more precisely, a lack of knowledge – is seen as a crucial factor. Basic facts on climate change and climate politics are indeed unknown to a large share of the population. However, 'educating the […]

This is not just an absurdity, it's wrong: NHS to ban 'useful' anaesthetic to hit net zero targetsBut this is what we end up with when we've a societal frenzy - as with religious epidemics, to the extent that worshipping Gaia isn't in fact a religion.The NHS is banning an anaesthetic gas to meet net zero targets in a move that a leading climate expert has warned lacks any scientific basis.The health service has said it is "decommissioning" desflurane by early next year in order to help reduce "harmful emissions".The first error is to even dream that the NHS itself should be net zero. For that's not what net zero means.We don't even agree with the idea itself - we think that human utility will be maximised over time, the aim of the entire game, by having more climate change and emissions than the net zero target allows. But put that aside for the sake of the argument here. Net zero means that society as a whole is net zero in emissions. Not that each sector, subsector and detail of society is zero in emissions. That's the very meaning of the word "net" in there. We cannot all be zero emittive after all - CO2 emissions are an inevitable result of breathing. So, some emissions are to be allowed even if the aim is for the system to be that net zero. And those that are to be allowed are going to be those with the highest value, of course. Like, say, taking away the extreme pain of surgery by providing anaesthesia. This extends further too of course. People value flying - the average British summer causes that. OK, so that 2% of total emissions that are from flying are something we value highly, quite possibly more than the less climate change that would result from its absence. We can even test this - Air Passenger Duty is at or at least around the levels of a Stern compliant carbon tax and yet the flying still happens. People value flying more than they do the lesser amount of climate change. Therefore - that maximising of utility over time - we should keep the flying at the expense of the extra climate change. Which does bring us to an interesting result. When we actually examine human preferences properly, by revelation not expression, then we find that net zero isn't a target that everyone wants. And that before we get to the logical truth that the entire point of net zero is that not every activity needs to be non-emittive. Or as we can put it, carry on gassing the people in pain and put up with the extra millimetre of water upon Bangladesh.

Change is afoot at the Reserve Bank of Australia. This week the Treasurer announced Michele Bullock will take over from Philip Lowe as Governor of the RBA. Lowe had faced mounting political heat after he abandoned forward guidance given as late as November 2021 that interest rates would not rise until 2024 and joined central banks around the world in rapidly hiking interest rates.
One of Bullock's first tasks will be to oversee the implementation of the recommendations of the Review into the RBA released in March 2023. Most attention about the Review has focused on its proposed structural changes to the RBA, which would create separate boards for monetary policy decisions and institutional governance. This change will bring the RBA in line with many of its international peers. Last week, outgoing Governor Philip Lowe announced initial steps towards implementing this recommendation.
But in one important area, the Review's recommendations will leave Australia's central bank falling behind many of its international peers. The Review considered whether the RBA should play a more active role in climate policy. Although the Review affirmed the RBA's recent moves to incorporate climate risks in its analysis of the economy and the financial system, it explicitly recommended against the RBA using its monetary policy powers to reduce the risks of climate change [...]
The post Climate change and the RBA appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

This week we are looking at the politics of climate change. More specifically, how should political institutions be designed to maximise action towards net zero?

This week we ask: How best can political philosophers contribute to the fight against climate change?

This week we're discussing the politics of climate change and loss and damage policy, ahead of the upcoming COP28 conference.

Earlier this year, LSE Religion and Global Society researchers held an interfaith climate workshop for grassroots religious clerics and community leaders. Here, Cameron Howes highlights some of the workshop’s key lessons for engaging with faith groups on climate issues. As we approach COP28, commentators and observers may be surprised by two high-profile collaborations from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). … Continued

Call for Papers for an Issue of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology. Deadline: August 31, 2023