Tag Archives: Paris Climate Accord

The battle of the energy ecosystems

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We are currently locked into a ‘battle of ecosystems.’ where our very existence is requiring one side to win, it simply must, to be more dominant.

This ecosystem battle is between those that are highly vested in the fossil-based energy supply system of today and those that are forcing change into a more renewable reliant energy system as quickly as possible.

We are pushing so much of the principles and theories of ecosystems to the maximum test in the outcomes we wish to achieve, in the energy transition we require.

We are determining our future planet and what defines a healthy ecosystem in a very ad-hoc, self-determining way. The ambitions of so many vested interests need fresh evaluations in any new socio-economic structure. We must bring these two competing energy views into a balance. A balance that allows the planet to return to one where we, as humans, can be more in harmony with all that is around us, in the air we breathe, in sharing this earth in its diversity of resources, living creatures, and what it offers in natural wonder. Continue reading →

A dark day for the climate and the fight over global warming?

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Sadly, yesterday, 4th November 2019, the United States began the process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, notifying the UN of its intention to leave.

The notification starts a one-year process of exiting the global climate change accord, culminating the day after the 2020 US election.

The Paris agreement brought together 188 nations to combat climate change. The Paris accord agreed in 2015, committed the US and 187 other countries to keep rising global temperatures below 2C above pre-industrial levels and attempting to limit them even more, to a 1.5C rise. Climate change, or global warming, refers to the damaging effect on the atmosphere of gases, or emissions, released from industry and agriculture.

In a publication “The Paris Climate Agreement versus the Trump Effect: Countervailing Forces for Decarbonisation,”  IIEA Senior Fellow Joseph Curtin argues that the “Trump Effect” has created a powerful countervailing force acting against the momentum which the Paris Agreement on climate change hoped to generate. The real concern is that this decision will give instability and uncertainty until broader and deeper structural factors within the US political economy can be addressed as their (the USA) issues around energy resourcing, infrastructure, and urbanization are as much in crisis as anyone else. Can this national determination by the present administration go against the tide of so many? Continue reading →