Back to dark days of CO2 emissions

REPORT: STARK WARNING – NOT ENOUGH IS BEING DONE

Numbers show ‘we are returning to carbon-intensive business as usual’.

Global CO2 emissions have returned to pre-pandemic levels and then some, threatening to put climate treaty targets for capping global warming out of reach, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said yesterday.

Energy-related emissions were two percent higher in December 2020, than in the same month a year earlier, driven by economic recovery and a lack of clean energy policies, the IEA said in a report.

“The rebound in global carbon emissions toward the end of last year is a stark warning that not enough is being done to accelerate clean energy transitions worldwide,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol said in a statement.

“If governments don’t move quickly with the right energy policies, this could put at risk the world’s historic opportunity to make 2019 the definitive peak in global emissions.”

A year ago, the intergovernmental agency called on governments to put clean energy at the heart of economic stimulus plans, but the appeal appears to have fallen on deaf ears for the most part.

“Our numbers show we are returning to carbon-intensive business as usual,” Birol said.

In China, carbon pollution last year exceeded 2019 levels by more than half a percent despite a draconian, though brief, lockdown to halt the coronavirus’ spread.

China – which accounts for more than a quarter of global CO2 output – was the only major economy to grow in 2020. Other countries are also now seeing emissions climb above pre-Covid-19 crisis levels, the report found.

In India, they rose above 2019 levels from September, as economic activity increased and Covid-19 restrictions relaxed.

The rebound of road transport in Brazil from May, drove a recovery in oil demand, while increases in gas demand toward the end of 2020, pushed emissions above 2019 levels in the final quarter.

US emissions fell by 10% in 2020, but by December were approaching levels from the year before.

“If current expectations for a global economic rebound this year are confirmed – and in the absence of major policy changes in the world’s largest economies – global emissions are likely to increase in 2021,” Birol said. –

Global emissions are likely to increase in 2021

ENCA journalist Lindsay Dentlinger is taking flak for asking black MPs to wear masks when being interviewed, while not asking white MPs to do the same. For woke tweeps and their enemies, this is all about race. Views are entrenched about whether racism here was overt, subliminal or non-existent.

However, there is another question which has not been properly asked or answered. What is the professional role of the reporter’s seniors?

I asked a TV news executive about industry norms: surely there should be senior folks monitoring live-feed content? Surely they communicate with reporters and camera crews?

Indeed, it turns out Dentlinger would have had a producer/editor “in her ear” before, during and after the interviews. The producers (some call them content editors) help identify people to interview, and also to get their names and designations right and so on.

They call the shots.

“The producer/editor will give commands such as where to stand, how much time the reporter has left, when to link back to studio, questions to ask. And, definitely, direction and instructions, such as telling her to wear a mask, keep a distance, move a person being interviewed into the right frame and so on.

“All of us had to come up with standard operating procedures for Covid-19. For example, crew are not allowed to stand closer than 2m from a person being interviewed. And they have to use a boom mic – the longer pole-type.”

So it is possible the instruction to tell certain MPs and not others to wear a mask came from a producer. The idea may not have been Dentlinger’s.

eNCA is standing by Dentlinger. That still keeps the focus on her, rather than the producer(s), where it belongs.

Even if a producer did not give explicit instructions, producers remain responsible for content. If the reporter was practising racial discrimination, or giving the impression of doing so, the producer had the duty to stop her.

The producer could also have ensured that dodgy footage was edited. Whether or not racism was on display, you’d have to be tone deaf and blind not to see the potential reputational damage in the current climate.

Producers and editors are paid to make judgment calls. In December 2019, eNCA fired its director of news Kanthan Pillay. He showed poor judgment when, recycling a tired Churchill quip, he described a departing journalist as a rat swimming towards a sinking (SABC) ship.

In 2021, an unnamed producer seems to have gotten away with a more damaging judgment lapse.

Lapses of editorial judgment often go unpunished. Daily Maverick recently got rid of Jacques Pauw and “unpublished” a controversial column he had written about his brush with police during a drunken escapade.

Yet the column remained on Daily Maverick for a week. It had been published without being checked. So Pauw takes the blame, while those whose job it is to exercise judgment suffer no consequences.

Same pattern with the Sunday Times and David Bullard in 2008. Editors, eish.