SUBSECTOR FINANCING

JPMorgan Chase was also the top banker over the past three years of three spotlight oil and gas subsectors: Arctic oil and gas, ultra-deepwater oil and gas, and LNG. Our research shows an uptick in overall bank financing for Arctic oil and gas last year, which is worrisome considering the Trump regime’s attempts to open up the Arctic Refuge for drilling, as described on page 38. JPMorgan Chase is the biggest banker of Arctic oil and gas by a long shot, followed by Deutsche Bank and SMBC Group.

FOSSIL FUEL FINANCE REPORT CARD 2019

In October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a sobering report on the devastating impacts our world will face with 1.5° Celsius of warming — let alone 2°C — while setting out the emissions trajectory the nations of the world need to take if we are to have any shot at keeping to that 1.5°C limit. This 10th edition of the annual fossil fuel finance report card, greatly expanded in scope, reveals the paths banks have taken in the past three years since the Paris Agreement was adopted, and finds that overall bank financing continues to be aligned with climate disaster.

CARBON FOOTPRINT: THE HIDDEN RISKS OF FINANCED EMISSIONS

Large banks are driving climate change by pumping billions of dollars into carbon-intensive extreme fossil fuels and tropical deforestation, with significant hidden environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks. While banks report their operational emissions, emissions resulting from their financing activities can be 100x larger1 and are typically undisclosed. Climate change can have enormous financial implications, as recognized in the Recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) published in June 2017. “Responsible Investment” indexes such as the MSCI ACWI Low Carbon Target Index deceptively classify banks as “low-carbon” even as they heavily finance dangerous new carbon emissions (see below). The Paris Climate Agreement goal of keeping temperature rise to 1.5˚C won’t be achievable if banks and investors continue to fund and facilitate the burning and destruction of high-carbon assets. It’s time for banks to fully disclose the carbon footprint of their financing, decarbonize their portfolios, and accelerate the transition towards a sustainable low-carbon future (see Recommendations in the back).

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PENGANTAR TOKSIKOLOGI LINGKUNGAN

Sejak manusia pertama kali berkumpul di desa dan memanfaatkan api merupakan awal terjadi penurunan kualitas lingkungan oleh manusia, masalah semakin serius akibat dari dampak pertambahan pupulasi secara eksponential dan meningkatnya industrialisasi masyarakat. Penurunan kualitas lingkungan mungkin melalui perubahan-perubahan kimiawi, fisika, dan biologis dalam lingkungan melalui modifikasi atau perancuan terhadap sifat fisik dan prilaku biologis udara, air, tanah, makanan, dan limbah, karena dipengaruhi oleh pertanian, industri dan kegiatan sosial manusia. Secara nyata bahwa kegiatan manusia akan terus berlanjut memerlukan jumlah bahan bakar yang bertambah, bahan kimia industri, pupuk, pestisida, dan produk lainnya yang tidak terhitung; serta industri akan terus berlanjut menghasilkan produk limbah. Limbah gas akan sangat cepat terdistribusi menuju udara (atmosfer) selanjutnya akan terlarutkan oleh bintik-bintik air dan terbawa kembali ke bumi bersama hujan.

EMISSIONS GAP REPORT 2018

The world is at last beginning to tackle its fossil fuel addiction. Coal is no longer competitive, and wind farms and solar installations are gathering pace – in Australia, northern Europe, China, India and elsewhere. Electric mobility and ride sharing are redefining transport, especially in cities tired of breathing dirty air. Huge strides in energy efficiency are being made.

The problem, as the science here is telling us, is that we’re not making the change nearly as quickly as we need to. This is of course not new – it’s an almost carbon copy of what we were told last year, and the years before that. But what we do have is yet more compelling science, and something that adds to that provided by the 1.5 degree report recently released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

ADAPTASI MASYARAKAT ADAT TERHADAP PERUBAHAN IKLIM

Dampak perubahan iklim terhadap kehidupan telah banyak dilaporkan. Sebagai contoh di Kalimantan Barat, pada tahun 2006 telah terjadi krisis pangan di dua desa di Kecamatan Tanjung Lokang. Hal tersebut diduga terjadi karena produksi pertanian menurun bahkan megalami gagal panen akibat kemarau panjang. Di laporkan pula bahwa di Kalimantan Barat telah terjadi gagal panen di pertengahan tahun 2010 akibat cuaca yang selalu berubah-ubah tak menentu, sehingga produksi beras menurun hingga 70% dari produksi sebelumnya. Akibatnya, petani lebih berfokus untuk memperbaiki produksi getah pohon karetnya guna menutup biaya beli beras. Sebagai akibat dari bencana banjir di sejumlah kabupaten di Provinsi Kalimanta Barat tersebut, ratusan ribu orang kehilangan harta bendanya—yang berarti angka kemiskinanakan semakin meningkat (http://www.jeratpapua.org/2014/05/13/banjir-dan-perubahaniklim- di-papua/).

AGRICULTURAL SOLUTIONS TO CLIMATE CHANGE

            There are many strategies that farmers, businesses, and consumers can adopt to reduce greenhouse gases related to agriculture. First, farmers can replace fossil fuels such as gasoline and diesel with biofuels such as ethanol or biodiesel. Ethanol is a fuel alcohol that is produced by a fermentation process that uses yeast to convert the sugars found in plants into a combustible alcohol fuel. Ethanol can offset varying amounts of fossil fuel–generated carbon dioxide depending on the material used to produce the ethanol. For example, Brazil, located in a tropical climate, can efficiently grow sugarcane. Sugarcane is an excellent source material for ethanol because the sugars in sugarcane can be easily converted into alcohol. In the United States, corn is the primary feedstock for ethanol. It is more costly to convert corn into sugar because the sugars are bound up in long starch molecules. These carbohydrates must be broken down in order to free up the sugars to be converted into alcohol. Therefore, researchers in the United States are working hard to discover ways to lower the costs of producing corn-based ethanol.

AGRICULTURAL IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Given that crops and livestock thrive in a relatively narrow set of environmental parameters, it makes sense to explore how climate change will affect agricultural productivity. Factors considered include the impacts of rising temperatures, increased production of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, water supply fluctuations, soil quality variations, sea-level increases, and the introduction of new pests, diseases, and weeds, which could hurt agricultural output. These changes can have different impacts depending on the geographic scale of analysis. Climatic change will have different manifestations at local, regional, and global scales. Impacts will also vary according to the agricultural products under consideration. Some plant or animal species may be very resilient to environmental changes. Others may not adapt so well to change.

CONTRIBUTIONS AGRICULTURE TO CLIMATE CHANGE

While agriculture is affected by climate change, agricultural processes also contribute directly and indirectly to global warming. This occurs for many reasons. A direct contribution is agriculture’s reliance on the combustion of fossil fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and propane to power farm equipment, including tractors, combines, grain elevators, grain dryers, and transport trucks for shipping feed and livestock. Agriculture also relies on petrochemicals in the form of herbicides and pesticides. Estimates suggest that agriculture uses 8 percent of all energy consumed in the United States.

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION AND SUSTAINABILITY

The fourth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in February 2007, confirms the reality of global climate change. Some scientists have pointed to the uncertainties and the inevitable limits of the climatic modeling, and other researchers question the ascendancy of scientist’s analyses of the question in the public sphere. They assert that sociopolitical analyses should lead scholars to question the neo-liberal model of society, with its faith in technical progress, as well as the inequitable sharing of the wealth which ensues from it, according to Scott Lash, et al. The consensus of the IPCC experts has strengthened over the years, and concludes that the production of greenhouse gas of human origin is an important cause of global warming.

TAR SANDS

Alberta’s tar sands (also known as oil sands) are the world’s third-largest reserves of recoverable crude oil.60 Though it is expensive to extract, this oil fetches a much lower price than other heavy oils due to the difculty in getting the landlocked tar sands to the United States and other potential markets. Thus, tar sands companies are desperate to promote new and expanded pipelines. The need for new pipeline capacity is particularly acute as companies ramp up production at projects that were started several years ago, while still planning new projects, such as Teck Resources’ massive Frontier Mine.

CASE STUDY: OPPOSING THE LINE 3 TAR SANDS PIPELINE

Enbridge’s Line 3 so-called “replacement” project is a proposal for a new pipeline that would cover more than 1,000 miles from Hardisty, Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin, transporting an average of 760,000 barrels of crude oil from the Alberta tarsands each day, with capacity for 844,000 barrels per day.

Enbridge intends to abandon its existing Line 3 pipeline if it is able to complete its new Line 3, leaving the corroding pipe in the ground and a lasting legacy of contamination. The replacement Line 3 would take a brand new route. This path cuts through pristine wetlands and watersheds in northern Minnesota, passing through the headwaters of the Mississippi River to the shores of Lake Superior, through the heart of Minnesota’s lake country and some of the largest and most productive wild rice beds in the world.

CASE STUDY: EXTREME ENERGY INJUSTICE AND INDIGENOUS RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN ALASKA

Alaska Native rights and Indigenous sovereignty cannot be separated from the problem of extreme oil and gas production in Alaska. Politicians and oil interests have a long history of pushing legislation nullifying Alaska Native land claims, especially those claims that stood in the way of oil and pipeline development.

After being declared a state in 1958, Alaska selected for oil development tracts of land on the North Slope, in an area called Prudhoe Bay. Without consultation and consent of the local Inupiat village, but with approval of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, these lands were transferred to the state.

COAL MINING POLICY REVIEW

The global coal mining sector is under pressure like never before. An increasing number of analysts and industry watchers (including at Goldman Sachs175) are declaring that thermal coal has now entered structural, rather than cyclical, decline. Coal mining companies have to contend with the fact that six countries, states, provinces, or cities have completely phased out coal power since 2014, and an additional 17 haveannounced a coal power phase-out date of 2030 or sooner. Among them are three G7 countries, eight EU countries, and Beijing and Delhi — all committed to becoming coal-free. Also in 2017, South Korea, the world’s fourth largest coal importer, announced a major reduction in its coal power reliance, a move that has dire implications for Indonesian coal producers in particular.

CASE STUDY: HOUSTON: HURT BY THE CAUSES AND SYMPTOMS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

The torrential downpours and violent winds of Hurricane Harvey struck Houston, Texas in August and September 2017. Harvey killed at least 68 people and displaced over one million,leaving approximately 200,000 damaged homes along its 300- mile trail. Damages from the hurricane tallied an estimated $125 billion. The aftermath is still being felt through the region.

Environmental racism exacerbates the pain caused by natural disasters by disproportionately affecting low-income communities of color close to industrial sites. In the wake of Harvey, these communities were exposed to increased levels of toxic chemicals from Houston’s superfund sites, chemical plants, and oil refneries during the storms. Houston is an industrial hub with a busy ship channel, in a state that’s home to 30 percent of the country’s oil refning capacity. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, Hurricane Harvey causeddamaged refneries and chemical facilities to release nearly sixmillion pounds of cancer-causing chemicals into the air.

STOP FUNDING FOSSILS: WHY THE FINANCE SECTOR MUST FOLLOW THE WORLD BANK’S LEAD

            Achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement will require action across all sectors of the economy, and the finance sector is clearly fundamental. In fact, one of the Paris Agreement’s three objectives is “making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development. Recent announcements by some of the world’s largest financial institutions reveal an emerging consensus that all fossil fuel investment and financing risks both climate security and economic value. The finance sector has an important role to play in ending further exploration and the expansion of fossil fuel production.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

2017 may go down in history as the year when it frst became clear that the fossil fuel era was fnally starting to sputter to an end. The cost of new solar and wind power started to fall below the price of new coal and gas plants in a growing number of regions. The CEO of NextEra Energy, one of the largest electricity producers in the US, now predicts that “early in the next decade” — just a few years from now — power will be cheaper from unsubsidized new wind and solar plants in the US than from existing coal and nuclear plants. It’s still far from game over for the fossil fuel industry, but the game hasdrastically changed.

EARTH’S CLIMATE HISTORY

Climate is not a static set of weather conditions, constant over eons; rather it varies, sometimes in dramatic ways, over time. The hot climate of the newlyformed Earth gave way to glaciers in a little more than a billion years, an immense time by human reckoning, but not nearly so long by geological standards. Earth’s climate has alternated many times between hot and cold periods of varying magnitudes. Radiation from the Sun, the ocean currents, rainfall, wind, continental drift, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, volcanic activity, radioactivity in the Earth’s core, the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit around the sun, the tilt of Earth’s axis, and photosynthesis all affect climate. Climate has not one, but, rather, myriad causes. Disentangling these causes is not easy, but it is necessary to understanding why climate changes over time. The current climate is warming. The culprit, carbon dioxide, has been increasing in the atmosphere, driving up temperature, and prompting speculation over Earth’s future climate.

ANALISIS DAMPAK METANA BAGI KEHIDUPAN

Metana merupakan gas yang terbentuk oleh adanya ikatan kovalen antara empat atom H dengan satu atom C. Metana merupakan suatu alkana. Alkana secara umum mempunyai sifat sukar bereaksi (memiliki afinitas kecil) sehingga biasa disebut sebagai parafin. Sifat lain dari alkana adalah mudah mengalami reaksi pembakaran sempurna dengan oksigen menghasilkan gas karbon dioksida (CO₂) dan uap air (H₂O) dengan reaksi:

CH_{4 (g}) + O_{2 (g)} à  CO_{2 (g)} + H₂O _(g)

Metana merupakan gas yang tidak berwarna, sehingga tidak bisa dilihat dengan mata telanjang. Tetapi metana dapat diidentifikasi melalui indra penciuman karena baunya yang khas. Sebenarnya gas metana berada di sekitar kita. Beberapa di antaranya akan saya sebutkan di sini.

ASIDIFIKASI SAMUDERA

 Pemanasan global atau biasa disebut global warming merupakan suatu fenomena yang terjadi sejak ditemukannya mesin uap oleh James Watt sehingga menyulut sebuah revolusi besar di Inggris, yaitu Revolusi Industri. Secara singkat pemanasan global dapat diartikan sebagai fenomena meningkatnya suhu rata-rata permukaan bumi akibat gas rumah kaca yang terus terakumulasi di atmosfer.

Kontributor terbesar pemanasan global saat ini adalah karbon dioksida(CO₂), metana (CH₄) yang dihasilkan agrikultur dan peternakan (terutama dari sistem pencernaan hewan-hewan ternak), Nitrogen Oksida (NO) dari pupuk, dan gas-gas yang digunakan untuk kulkas dan pendingin ruangan (CFC). Rusaknya hutan-hutan yang seharusnya berfungsi sebagai penyimpan CO₂ juga makin memperparah keadaan ini karena pohon-pohon yang mati akan melepaskan CO₂ yang tersimpan di dalam jaringannya ke atmosfer.