From Guardian: “Let me show you the world, says Swedish academic Han Rosling as he demonstrates the dynamics of population growth, child mortality and carbon dioxide emissions. The challenge for the world is to get everyone out of extreme poverty and get the richest people to use less fossil fuels so that everyone can share their energy levels, he says.”
Addressing the population and resources constraints, Green Drinks March presents a talk you don’t want to miss. This month, we aim to bring together people who believes that through earnest planning, design ingenuity and innovation, we could achieve a sustainable environment for growth and progress especially in Singapore. We are very honoured to have speakers:
From Reuters & GlobeScan: Canada-based research group GlobeScan surveyed 22,812 people from 22 countries, asking them to rate the seriousness of six issues – air pollution, water pollution, species loss, automobile emissions, fresh water shortages and climate change.
On average, 49 percent of people surveyed said climate change was a “very serious” concern and 50 percent said the same for biodiversity loss. The highest level of concern was about fresh water shortages, with 58 percent of people rating this as a “very serious” concern.
“Scientists report that evidence of environmental damage is stronger than ever but our data shows that economic crisis and a lack of political leadership mean that the public are starting to tune out,” said Doug Miller, chairman of GlobeScan.
The PwC Low Carbon Economy Index evaluates the rate of decarbonisation of the global economy that is needed to limit warming to 2°C. This is based on a carbon budget that would stabilise atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at 450 ppm and give a 50% probability of limiting warming to 2°C.
This report shows that global carbon intensity decreased between 2000 and 2011 by around 0.8%a year. In 2011, carbon intensity decreased by just 0.7%.The global economy now needs tocut carbon intensity by 5.1% every year from now to 2050 to achievethis carbon budget. This requiredrate of decarbonisation has not been seen even in a single year since the mid-20th century whenthese records began.
Keeping to the 2°C carbon budget will requireunprecedented and sustainedreductions over four decades.Governments’ ambitions to limit warming to 2°C appear highly unrealistic.
Read the report:
From Green Drinks Singapore:
As requested, here are Julian Wong’s slides from his presentation at the October Green Drinks Session. Enjoy!
J.wong Systems Thinking Presentation
From Press Release:
ECO Special Waste Management (ECO) is pleased to announce the final completion of the first Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project in Singapore, under the Kyoto Protocol for control and management of greenhouse gases. This final completion was marked by the issuance on September 13th 2012 of Certified Emission Reductions (CERs), otherwise known as Carbon Credits, by the Executive Board of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to ECO’s facility “Dehydration and incineration of sewage sludge in Singapore.” (The project). ECO will now sell these credits to buyers in Europe or Japan to offset greenhouse gas emissions there.
“This is remarkable as the first issuance of carbon credits to any project or company in Singapore, is for a very large scale project, and is also the first sewage sludge project of its kind in the world to be approved and certified under the Clean Development Mechanism,” commented Rick Reidinger, CEO of ECO. “Moreover, the Project is the first of its kind in Southeast Asia, and has the potential to be adopted in other key cities in the Region to address the growing problems of sewage sludge disposal.”
