New York City sues oil companies over climate change

NEW York City is seeking damages of $20 billion from five companies to cover spiralling costs the city is facing.

https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/mining/new-york-city-sues-oil-companies-over-climate-change/news-story/62f094535840c8f389c966417c66b8ec

AFPJANUARY 15, 201810:09AM

NEW York’s mayor has announced plans to sell off $5 billion in fossil fuel investments from city pension funds after suing oil companies for billions of dollars to help fund protection against climate change.

The city has filed a federal claim seeking damages from BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell to help compensate its $US20 billion ($AU25 billion) plan to protect the city, economy and public services from the effects of climate change.

Mayor Bill de Blasio drew comparisons between oil companies and the tobacco industry, which knowingly profited out of a habit they knew to be harmful.

While other cities in Europe and the United States have already taken similar steps, New York hailed its move as significant, as it is the biggest metropolis in the country. The city suffered billions of dollars of damage in Hurricane Sandy which paralysed New York in 2012, causing 3m-high floods across coastal New York and New Jersey, and an estimated $US71 billion ($AU89.7 million) in damage.

A study published by researchers in October warned that rising sea levels from man-made climate change could prompt catastrophic flooding in New York as frequently as once every five years by 2030 to 2045.

New York’s $US189 billion $AU238.8 billion) pension fund — held for city employees such as police officers, teachers and firefighters — currently has around $US5 billion ($AU6.3 billion) in securities of more than 190 fossil fuel companies, officials said.

Mayor de Blasio said staff would instruct fund trustees to start analysing ways to divest responsibly from fossil fuel over the next five years, in a process that officials warned would not be easy and would take time.

“New York City is standing up for future generations by becoming the first major US city to divest our pension funds from fossil fuels,” Mayor de Blasio said.

US President Donald Trump inflamed the world last year by announcing that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, setting off a crescendo of efforts by Democrat-run cities and states to shrink the country’s carbon footprint.

A report issued at UN talks last November said those efforts would not fully counteract Mr Trump’s decision to reverse climate policies and promote fossil fuel use.

In December, the US did not attend international climate talks in Paris, where countries announced they were boosting investment in green energy and divesting from fossil fuels.

New York, home to 8.5 million residents and the US financial capital, is a bastion of opposition to Mr Trump.

Flood damaged streets are viewed in the Rockaway section of Queens where the historic boardwalk was washed away due to Hurricane Sandy on October 31, 2012 in the Queens borough of New York City. Picture: Spencer Platt/Getty Images/AFPSource:AFP

COURTS ‘NOT THE ANSWER’

“New York City is taking on these five giants because they are the central actors, they are the first ones responsible for this crisis, and they should not get away with it anymore,” Mayor de Blasio told reporters.

“As climate change continues to worsen, it’s up to the fossil fuel companies whose greed put us in this position to shoulder the cost of making New York safer and more resilient.”

Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell issued statements calling the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions a global issue that required more sweeping action than legal action.

BP and ConocoPhillips declined to comment.

“Climate change is a complex societal challenge that should be addressed through sound government policy and cultural change to drive low-carbon choices for businesses and consumers, not by the courts,” a Shell spokesperson said.

Last month, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo also unveiled plans to divest state pension funds from fossil fuel investments.

In June 2016, the largest public pension fund in the US capital Washington said it had successfully purged its $US6.4 billion ($AU8 billion) fund of all direct holdings in fossil fuels.

Later that year, global movement DivestInvest said funds held by institutions and individuals committed to divesting from fossil fuel had reached $US5.2 trillion ($AU6.5 trillion).

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is taking action against oil companies. Picture: Nicholas Hunt/Getty ImagesSource:Getty Images

Farmland could be used to sustainably offset America’s entire carbon footprint—if the will exists

https://qz.com/1188241/farmland-could-be-used-to-sustainably-offset-americas-entire-carbon-footprint-if-the-will-exists/

Amid the roaring debate on how to curb climate change in Bonn last year, an impasse was finally broken on agriculture. Both a cause and casualty of climate change, our food system accounts for up to 24% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet hit by soaring temperatures and more frequent extreme weather, farming is becoming more difficult, as demand continues to increase.

Positive agricultural interventions could achieve up to 6% of reductionemissions needed to achieve the Paris Agreement goals—showing that this sector is not only part of the problem, but part of the solution to climate change.

Previously at climate talks, disagreement focussed on whether helping farmers adapt to climate change, or reducing the greenhouse gases produced by the sector should be prioritized, largely along developing vs. developed country lines.

Developed countries, already equipped with successful techniques for ramping up agricultural production, are more interested in mitigation, making existing techniques more climate-friendly. On the other hand, in developing countries, drought, floods, and hurricanes all play havoc with the mostly smallholder-driven agriculture sector. Their priority is to help those farmers adapt and find food security.

In Bonn at the latest round of climate talks, a compromise was reachedto allow two technical bodies to work together to identify solutions on how the agriculture sector can be a part of the solution. The question is: where to begin? How can we rein in emissions in agriculture, while making farmers more resilient to the whims of the weather?

One solution stands out. Eighty-nine percent of agriculture’s future mitigation potential could lie in capturing carbon on farmland soils: carbon sequestration. Not only does this process suck harmful carbon out of the atmosphere, it makes soils healthier and more fertile for future food production, boosting resilience to climate change.

Soil carbon sequestration should make both sides of the mitigation vs. adaptation debate happy. Efforts to capitalize on this win-win solution need to be stepped up—and now. To do this, we needed to determine which areas in the world could contribute which quantities of carbon sequestration.

A new paper published in Scientific Reports tells us just that. Findings show that the world’s farmland soils have the technical potential to offset as much carbon as the United States emits, if they are managed better. This would also be equal to removing all the carbon from the atmosphere that the transport sector emits each year.

The analysis focused on croplands, which make up about one-third of agricultural lands globally. The results show that North America has the highest potential for soil carbon storage. So how can American farmers take action?

New technology means soil health can be managed at much finer scales than has been possible previously. For example, American companiesare embracing precision agriculture, investing in sensors and camera-equipped drones that can send information on soil health and moisture wirelessly to a computer.

This type of technology could allow farmers to find out exactly which type and quantity of fertilizer to apply in which area of the farm to reach the optimum level of soil health, improving the soil’s capacity to trap carbon.

Other methods are simpler: reducing use of heavy machinery to till land; mulching or covering the soil with already harvested maize stalks to protect the surface. These options can all keep more carbon in North American soils and improve productivity.

These practices work in other parts of the world too. Africa, with its large area of croplands (~2.6 million km2), has high potential for soil carbon storage—although equipping farmers to step up carbon sequestration efforts will be more difficult in these areas, because they require scarce labor resources, and extension services are more constrained.

Yet there are many other options to consider. Pasture lands in Africa often have low productivity, so using improved forage varieties and mixing legume plants into pasture vegetation can increase soil carbon storage – while having the added benefit of increasing live weight gain of livestock.

Agroforestry—planting trees on farmland—is also a promising option in Africa, particularly since some trees are actually able to fix nitrogen to the soil. It also helps farmers diversify their production, improving their diet and making them less vulnerable to shocks.

At the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, we are working on a number of tools to help investors and other decision makers assess which efforts are best placed to restore degraded land in specific areas. The Soil Organic Carbon app, for example, can calculate the amount of organic carbon that could be sequestered in the soil, based on soil organic carbon concentration and the impact of soil protection practices on sequestration over time and at different scales.

But there is more research to be done. The evidence overwhelmingly shows that agriculture increasingly supports solutions to tackle both food security and environmental goals. What we need now is a united effort to prevent the world’s soils from remaining an untapped carbon sink.

It is time to unlock its vast potential to roll back emissions, ensure food security, and put us on a more sustainable path towards climate stability.

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