How To Slow Climate Change: Loosely, In The Sky With Diamonds

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All aboard folks! Team LMSU is continuing our BoCo odyssey, adventuring through each of the six sector decarbonisation plans. AND we’re bringing friends! That’s right, we’re calling in even nerdier reinforcements and experts to join us as we venture on. This week, we’ll be joined by sometime co-host Alison Reeve from the Grattan Institute to unpack the Industry sector plan. And if somehow that isn’t temptation enough for you crazy climate cats, the only way you’ll see evidence of Luke, Tennant and Frankie’s cosplay efforts at our recent Chaos Trivia event is by subscribing, so hop to it!

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With COP30 in Belem, Brazil only days away, your intrepid hosts dive into recent remarks from UN Secretary General, António Guterres, widely reported as ‘the world has missed 1.5C’, the reality being much more nuanced commentary from this climate champion as he enters his final year as Secretary General. Undoubtedly, it feels like a threshold moment as he acknowledges the world has breached 1.5C. We are now in the realm of overshoot, but the longer term of objective of stabilising temperature increases to 1.5C is still possible - keeping 1.5 alive - but only if we redouble efforts to focus on decarbonisation here and now, and flags the need to ramp up efforts on negative emissions. Significant remarks and food for thought on the real and difficult choices ahead!

Our main course

Is it 1965 or is what’s old new once again folks? Your intrepid hosts wade into the technical, controversial, futuristic yet bafflingly bootstrapped proposition that is geoengineering - shooting stuff into the sky and blocking out some sunlight, cooling the earth’s surface. What could possibly go wrong?! Well, this paper, ‘Engineering and logistical concerns add practical limitations to stratospheric aerosol injection strategies’ published in Nature and authored by Miranda Hack, V. Faye McNeill, Dan Steingart and Gernot Wagner, has some thoughts! Engineering challenges? Yes! Cost? What better use of diamond dust could there be! Governance issues? A few! What is incredibly clear from reading this paper is that there are no easy decisions when it comes to the need to consider negative emissions technologies or other novel ways of moderating temperature increases. Could it be that on closer inquiry, we should just focus on getting on with decarbonising, or is more research required?

One more things

Tennant’s One More Thing is: more ranting about data centres! Tennant has questions about the ultimate viability of the eyewatering numbers of speculative capacity in new data centre growth, as well as the equally worrying implications for viability coal closures if much of this does come to pass. Bubble or not, we’ll find out soon enough!

Frankie’s One More Thing is: a massive shout out and thanks to 150 fabulous folk that fronted up to Chaos Trivia last week in Melbourne, including ultimate winners, No One Likes A Gentailer. Props to our co-hosts Currently Speaking, our MC extraordinaire Mark Spencer and The NEMChat Singers who added colour, movement and grooves to the chaos! With all proceeds going to the brilliant First Nations Clean Energy Network there was much to love.  

Luke’s One More Thing is: a definitely-not-resentful readout of the paper he really wanted us to read this episode, IRENA’s ‘Delivering on the UAE Consensus: Tracking progress toward tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency by 2030.’ TL;DR is we’re going gangbusters on solar but woeful progress on energy efficiency. More to do!

And that’s it for now, Summerupperers. There is now a one-stop-shop for all your LMSU needs: head to

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