Yvo de Boer: - The United Nations is preparing a report on climate change that "will scare the wits out of everyone"

Read this in full @ Sydney Morning Herald: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/former-un-official-says-climate-report-will-shock-nations-into-action-20121106-28w5c.html#ixzz2BXNjtR5t

THE next United Nations climate report will ''scare the wits out of everyone'' and should provide the impetus needed for the world to finally sign an agreement to tackle global warming, the former head of the UN negotiations said.

Yvo de Boer, the UN climate chief during the 2009 Copenhagen climate change talks, said his conversations with scientists working on the next report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested the findings would be shocking.

"That report is going to scare the wits out of everyone,'' Mr de Boer said in the only scheduled interview of his visit to Australia. "I'm confident those scientific findings will create new political momentum.''

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/former-un-official-says-climate-report-will-shock-nations-into-action-20121106-28w5c.html#ixzz2BXNjtR5t

Australian Taxpayers $$ go to Sri Lankan forests thru UNDP Carbon Certificate programme

Click here to read this story @ Colombo Page: http://www.colombopage.com/archive_12A/Oct13_1350109964CH.php


Oct13, Colombo: The Sri Lankan government together with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Australian government has launched a community forestry program.

The program launched Wednesday (October 11) with AUD 5 million (over 650 million rupees) assistance from Australia aims to increase forest cover and support small farmers living in Sri Lanka's dry zone.

According to the UNDP, Sri Lanka has lost half of its forest cover during the past hundred years and deforestation and forest degradation which result in lack of water for farming and drinking is a source of poverty for rural households.

Also the dwindling forest cover increases the risk of drought and forest fires as Sri Lanka recently experienced.

Large number of poor farmer communities use forest resources to survive, the UNDP points out.
Under the government's Mahinda Chintana Future Vision, Sri Lanka plans to double the forest cover in 10 years.

Click here to read this story @ Colombo Page: http://www.colombopage.com/archive_12A/Oct13_1350109964CH.php

UNDP rejoice with the prospect of China, Australia and California to open comon carbon market, gets ready to trade its certificates

Read full story: http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/chinas-carbon-trading-debut-defies-doubters-20121012-27hti.html#ixzz294uj9pYy

China’s first steps to build what is destined to be the world’s second-biggest emissions market are boosting the prospects for fledgling programs from Australia to California.

Four cement makers in China, the world’s biggest emitter, bought 1.3 million pollution permits for 60 yuan ($9) a metric ton last month in Guangdong. The province plans the largest of seven pilot programs for a proposed national market within three years. Exchanges will trade permits to emit an estimated 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases a year by 2015, close to half the volume in the European Union system.

By setting its own emission limits and allowing polluters to buy and sell permits, China’s domestic market is set to dwarf its own participation in the UN market, Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecasts...

Read full story: http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/chinas-carbon-trading-debut-defies-doubters-20121012-27hti.html#ixzz294uj9pYy

Kevin Rudd says: " FAO and United Nations are to be blamed for food crisis - they are only printin reports instead of executing their mandate to really fight poverty and develop agriculture"

Click here to read this @ Nation.com.pk: http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/international/28-Sep-2012/un-criticised-on-food-security

HONG KONG - Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd on Thursday criticised the UN food agency for failing to do enough on food security, as fears mount of a repeat of the 2007-2008 food crisis.

Rudd told a conference in Hong Kong that the leadership of the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), based in Rome, needed to get its act together and not just release “another set of reports”. “The fact that we’re having this kind of conference is an indictment of the failure of the FAO,” he told the meeting - titled “Feeding the world: Asia’s Prospect of Plenty” - which was organised by The Economist magazine.

“The execution of its mandate, which is food security, must now be done.“A practical programme against the billions of people who are hungry in the world today needs to be done - not another set of reports, not another set of committees. Action, action, action,” he told reporters later.

The FAO has called for “swift, coordinated international action” this month as a sharp rise in maize, wheat and soybean prices renews fears of a looming food crisis.Drought in the United States has pushed grain prices to record highs, and the FAO has cut its global 2012 rice output forecast due to low monsoon rainfall in India.

UN estimates say the world population is projected to increase by two billion people between 2012 and 2050 to around nine billion, with Asia accounting for more than half of the increase.“Hunger is the world’s most challenging problem,” UN World Food Programme China director Brett Rierson said.“There is a common perception that hunger is an African problem, but two-thirds of them are from Asia so hunger is here in Asia,” he said.

Manila-based Asian Development Bank warned in April that food shortages could slow poverty reduction, and a rise of 10 percent in domestic food prices could push 64 million more Asians into poverty.

This news was published in print paper. Access complete paper of this day.

Click here to read this @ Nation.com.pk: http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/international/28-Sep-2012/un-criticised-on-food-security

The Australian: - Ted Baillieu to dump carbon target

THE Baillieu government will today dump state Labor's 20 per cent greenhouse emissions reduction target by 2020, in the latest pro-jobs policy shift designed to shore up support among an ambivalent business community.

An independent review of Victoria's Climate Change Act will warn against keeping a state-backed target when the national benchmark is as low as 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020.

The review also will cite modelling stating that even with an emissions trading scheme, meeting the 20 per cent target would require the Baillieu government to spend an extra $2.2 billion to buy international offsets.

The decision to dump the 20 per cent reduction target by 2020 -- based on 2000 levels -- comes despite the Coalition refusing to oppose the target when it was passed during Labor's last term in power.

The target is included in state law but will be repealed by the government, which has control of both houses of parliament.

CLICK HERE TO READ FULL ARTICLE ON - THE AUSTRALIAN

United Nations bets it all on Australia's Carbon Tax (millions of $$$ spent from UNEP and GEF to sponsor Tax in Australia)

Carbon tax is Prime Minister Julia Gillard's 'foreign plan', Tony Abbott says

Click here for story on dailytelegraph.com.au

Necessary tax ... Gillard said the next decade will be difficult without a carbon tax. Source: The Daily Telegraph

THE carbon tax is Julia Gillard's "foreign content plan", according to Tony Abbott, who said today the Coalition would continue fighting the tax even though it is destined to pass parliament.

The Gillard Government’s clean energy draft laws are expected to sail through the lower house on Wednesday, before heading to the Senate where they will be voted on some time next month.

The Opposition Leader this morning continued his attack on the Prime Minister, ahead of Wednesday’s vote.

“We’re going to give it a very good fight and you know this carbon tax is Julia Gillard’s foreign content plan because it will put Australia’s manufacturing at a permanent competitive disadvantage,” he told Channel Nine.

“So, she was talking about supporting local manufacturing last week, this week she wants to pass through the parliament a carbon tax that will permanently damage it and, as I said, it’s her foreign content plan for the goods we buy.”

A new manufacturing industry group – which has brought together a number of large companies including BlueScope Steel, Boral and Amcor – has also criticised the carbon tax, saying it should be deferred.

Manufacturing Australia’s executive chairman, former Reserve Bank board member Dick Warburton, said it seemed “quite wrong” to introduce the carbon tax “until we have a clear picture of what is going on in the rest of the world”.

“In fact countries are actually pulling out of carbon taxes and (emissions trading schemes) and therefore for us to go ahead with very little protection of the emissions at a distinct disadvantage to our economy just doesn’t seem right,” he told ABC Radio.

However a new report, released by Climate Change Minister Greg Combet today, shows climate change is putting at risk alpine water that is worth $9.6 billion a year to the Australian economy.

The Australian Conservation Foundation said the report underlined the urgent need to cut greenhouse pollution.

``The snow-capped peaks of the Australian Alps are a rare and beautiful thing in our mostly dry continent, but they could be gone by the middle of this century if we let climate change continue unabated,'' ACF chief executive Don Henry said.

``This report shows again how vital it is that our federal parliamentarians get on with the job of putting a price on carbon pollution - the primary driver of climate change.''

Meanwhile the government is furiously trying to avoid embarrassment on the issue of asylum seekers.

The government is just on vote away from having the numbers to change its migration laws and resurrect its controversial Malaysia people-swap deal.

Only WA Nationals MP Tony Crook – who sits on the crossbenches – is undecided on the issue. If he sides with the government it will hardly matter, since the Coalition and the Greens will vote down the legislation in the Senate.

But if Mr Crook sides with Mr Abbott in the lower house, it would be the first time in 80 years that a government loses a vote on legislation in the House of Representatives.

Carbon trade 'pot' for dirty money

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THIS ON SMH.COM.AU

THE Australian Crime Commission is doing a new assessment of the potential for organised crime to target Australia's emissions trading scheme as it works with the Department of Climate Change to minimise the risk.

But the chief executive of the commission, John Lawler, rejected assertions his organisation had issued any new findings about the possibility that organised crime would infiltrate the carbon trading scheme and denied it had described the market as a ''honeypot'' for criminals.

The opposition climate change spokesman, Greg Hunt, said this week ''new warnings from the Australian Crime Commission about carbon credit fraud add further weight to the argument that a carbon tax is not in Australia's best interests''.

The Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, warned about the ''scope for scamming'' presented by the scheme and also about the ''intrusive carbon cop'' being set up to regulate and police it.

Mr Lawler said there was ''some risk that carbon credits could be used for money laundering purposes as they can be bought and traded using criminal proceeds to disguise the true origin of the funds … risks similar to other financial products which represent value such as securities and derivatives''.

He said that the commission had produced a discussion paper on the issue in 2008 and ''the overall level of risk assessed at that time was not high''.

The commission was ''undertaking an updated assessment on the potential exploitation by organised criminals of a domestic carbon trading scheme'' as part of consultations with the Department of Climate Change.

He said allegations of fraud in the European Union scheme ''provide Australia with a distinct advantage in responding to potential exploitation''.

The government is setting up a clean energy regulator to administer and regulate the scheme and the Climate Change Minister, Greg Combet, has said its tough penalties were designed to avoid the instances of fraud that had occurred in Europe.

In Australia the Socialist Gov lied to Parliament - saying that the Carbon Tax will work because the "United States would join the scheme by 2016"

CLICK HERE FOR THIS STORY - SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

Aus Treasury defends carbon price modelling

Treasury officials have rejected claims their carbon price modelling collapses if the United States does not introduce an emissions trading scheme.

Treasury macroeconomic executive director David Gruen told a parliamentary inquiry the department had made assumptions about international climate change action based on the "best information" available now.

"The modelling is based on the US taking action but it's not based on the US taking action specifically as an emission trading scheme," he said.

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Dr Gruen said the US could take action through regulatory measures.

Liberal senator Mathias Cormann then asked the treasury officials to clarify earlier statements that the modelling assumes comparable carbon pricing in other major economies from 2015/16.

"We have modelled abatement in the US but that abatement could take alternative ways," Dr Gruen said.

"We are doing the best we can do based on the information we have now.

"We do not have a crystal ball that tells us actually what is going to happen."

The Treasury official said treasury had taken into account countries' pledges at the UN climate talks in Cancun last year.

"We have operationalised those in our modelling but it does require those countries to live up to those pledges," Dr Gruen said.

Last week, opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said Treasury's updated carbon tax modelling was worthless "because it's based on a fantasy that the Unites States would be part of a global trading scheme by 2016".

"This is utterly out of line with anything that is realistic," Mr Hunt said.

The federal government has introduced bills to price carbon emissions from mid-2012.

The price would begin at a fixed rate of $23 per tonne, rising for three years, before a floating market-based scheme would start in mid-2015.

The joint select committee on Labor's so-called clean energy future legislation continues in Canberra.

At U.N. everyone in suspense waiting for Australia's Gov to vote on carbon tax. It will be the world's first country to implement carbon tax regime.

United States and Canada are next !

Australian Cabinet to vote on carbon tax

CLICK HERE FOR STORY ON WWW.UPI.COM

CANBERRA, Australia, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- Australia will introduce a carbon price in Parliament next month and it is expected to become a law by the end of the year, the federal government said Wednesday.

Under the controversial tax, Australia's 500 highest-polluting companies will pay $24 per ton of carbon pollution they emit beginning July 1, 2012. In addition, a market-based carbon trading scheme would be introduced in 2015, allowing major polluters to buy offsetting shares in companies producing emissions less than target levels.

Wednesday's announcement follows a protest by about 2,000 Australians on Tuesday -- the anniversary of a pledge that Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard made during last year's federal election not to introduce a carbon tax – demanding that the government scrap the plan.

The latest Nielsen poll indicates that 56 percent of Australian voters asked said they are against the tax scheme and an Institute of Public Affairs survey showed that 70 percent of accountants polled said small business would be negatively affected by a carbon tax.

Australian Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said Wednesday the government has ruled out putting off the carbon tax.

"This is a reform that is in our economic interests to make," he told Sky News.

"This will drive investment in new technologies, innovation, it will improve the productivity of our economy over time -- there is no case for delaying it here."

The Institute of Public Affairs, a free market think tank, urged the Gillard administration to scrap the carbon tax in light of the looming economic downturn of China.

The world's largest exporter of coal and iron ore, Australia is China's largest supplier of iron ore.

"The recent stock market roller coaster and the European and U.S. debt crises have shed light on the risks associated with Australia's reliance on China's thirst for our resources," Hugh Tobin, director of the Northern Australia Project at IPA, said in a release.

Tobin said that once global demand drops in the resource sector, commodity prices would fall from the current high levels. The combination of falling commodity prices, along with Australia's introduction of proposed mining and carbon taxes, he warned, would make many Australian projects unprofitable.

"China is deliberately moving to reduce its reliance on Australian minerals in favor of increasingly cheaper markets in parts of West Africa and South America," Tobin said. "Why would we want to add on new taxes and make ourselves uncompetitive at a time like this?"