SnippETS for 28 March 2019

Welcome to our latest SnippETS newsletter.

This week we start with articles discussing the recent worldwide school strike for climate change, where young people are pushing for real action on climate change.

We follow with an article that explains how the corporate world can help individuals to overcome barriers to climate change actions, and then discuss that Kiwi businesses need to act now to address climate change, because the regulatory landscape is about to change for all NZ businesses.

Next, we have a series of articles that discuss working with natural carbon sequestration solutions, before discussing how a carbon accounting loophole is being challenged.

We then look at action a NZ dairy company has taken to reduce GHG emissions and close with an article about an art exhibit designed to raise awareness about plastic pollution.

Last Friday, school student strikes, urging adults to take responsibility and stop climate change, began taking place in over 2000 cities worldwide. An estimated 1.4 million pupils from around the world participated in the School Strike For Climate. “We want a voice when it comes to making decisions, versus the older generations—who just don’t care—making decisions for us,” said one of the pupils, “For climate action, we don’t think the government is doing enough.” Read more.....

Through the help of school strikes and media coverage, the issue of climate change is now widely acknowledged. However, a new study highlights several barriers preventing individual action on climate change. The question is, how do we overcome the roadblocks that prevent people from doing more? Understanding what prevents people from changing their behavior is the first step to unlocking opportunities to reduce human impact on climate change. Read more.....

Law firm Bell Gully says Kiwi businesses need to act now to address climate change. Bell Gully partner Simon Watt says the government’s Zero Carbon Bill, which will be introduced to parliament this year, will provide a shakeup to the business community and they can’t afford to procrastinate. The legislation will introduce a cap on emissions through to a net zero emissions target for 2050. Watt says the legislation will see emissions pricing become a much bigger issue for businesses. Read more.....

Nature, if left to its own devices, will help itself by sequestering carbon in many different ways. Firstly, forests, where photosynthesis is the key. If countries change the way they log trees to a more selective system, forests will benefit, as will the levels of CO2 in our atmosphere, and some countries could halve their emissions towards their Paris commitments. Read more.....

With sea level rising, nature’s way of mitigating the carbon level problem is to use the marshes and wetlands to actually increase the amount of carbon being sequestered. We get a deeper understanding of how this works from this article, and see the importance of preserving these important natural carbon sinks. Read more.....

Another important crop for sequestering carbon is bamboo. Among its many benefits, because it is fast growing, and strong, it can sequester large amounts of carbon in a short time. And because it is strong, it can be used for construction and the carbon stored for a longer term. If more people were aware of its potential, it could be a major mitigating factor in the carbon emissions problem. Read more.....

The EU is being sued to stop allowing a serious accounting loophole: burning trees for energy, but not counting the emissions from this burning wood against a country’s total carbon emissions. This has meant that the EU has been importing wood from other countries to burn for energy and destroying forests in the process. It really is a case of creative accounting, and ‘if we can’t see it, how can it be a problem?’. Read more.....

Closer to home, a major milk processor, Synlait, is taking coal out of their energy producing process, turning to local engineering solutions to move to energy production from biomass, natural gas and an electrode boiler. They are also working with farmers to improve their practices (providing better payment for better environmental performance) and work on the company’s overall carbon footprint in positive ways. Read more.....

We finish with a look at an art installation in Singapore, ‘Plastikophobia’. The aim is to scare Singaporeans into using less plastic. 18,000 cups were collected over two days for this work. But that’s only a tiny amount of the 21.5 million cups wasted annually in Singapore. It’s a shame the art installation looks so nice, perhaps if it looked like rubbish…? Hopefully the impact will be there all the same. Read More.....