Commission for the Human Future aggregator

Lethal Heating: There Are 10 Catastrophic Threats Facing Humans Right Now, And Coronavirus Is Only One Of Them

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 04:10:00 +1000

The Conversation - Arnagretta Hunter | John Hewson

DAN HIMBRECHTS/AAP

Arnagretta Hunter
ANU Human Futures Fellow 2020, Cardiologist and Physician, Australian National University
John Hewson
Professor and Chair, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Four months in, this year has already been a remarkable showcase for existential and catastrophic risk. A severe drought, devastating bushfires, hazardous smoke, towns running dry – these events all demonstrate the consequences of human-induced climate change.

While the above may seem like isolated threats, they are parts of a larger puzzle of which the pieces are all interconnected. A report titled Surviving and Thriving in the 21st Century, published today by the Commission for the Human Future, has isolated ten potentially catastrophic threats to human survival.

Not prioritised over one another, these risks are:

decline of natural resources, particularly water
collapse of ecosystems and loss of biodiversity
human population growth beyond Earth’s carrying capacity
global warming and human-induced climate change
chemical pollution of the Earth system, including the atmosphere and oceans
rising food insecurity and failing nutritional quality
nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction
pandemics of new and untreatable disease
the advent of powerful, uncontrolled new technology
national and global failure to understand and act preventatively on these risks.

In October, low water levels and dry land was recorded at Storm King Dam near Stanthorpe, Queensland. The dam’s water level was at 25%. DAN PELED/AAP

The start of ongoing discussions

The Commission for the Human Future formed last year, following earlier discussions within emeritus faculty at the Australian National University about the major risks faced by humanity, how they should be approached and how they might be solved. We hosted our first round-table discussion last month, bringing together more than 40 academics, thinkers and policy leaders.

The commission’s report states our species’ ability to cause mass harm to itself has been accelerating since the mid-20th century. Global trends in demographics, information, politics, warfare, climate, environmental damage and technology have culminated in an entirely new level of risk.

The risks emerging now are varied, global and complex. Each one poses a “significant” risk to human civilisation, a “catastrophic risk”, or could actually extinguish the human species and is therefore an “existential risk”.

The risks are interconnected. They originate from the same basic causes and must be solved in ways that make no individual threat worse. This means many existing systems we take for granted, including our economic, food, energy, production and waste, community life and governance systems – along with our relationship with the Earth’s natural systems – must undergo searching examination and reform.

COVID-19: a lesson in interconnection

It’s tempting to examine these threats individually, and yet with the coronavirus crisis we see their interconnection.

The response to the coronavirus has had implications for climate change with carbon pollution reduction, increased discussion about artificial intelligence and use of data (including facial recognition), and changes to the landscape of global security particularly in the face of massive economic transition.

It’s not possible to “solve” COVID-19 without affecting other risks in some way.

Shared future, shared approach

The commission’s report does not aim to solve each risk, but rather to outline current thinking and identify unifying themes. Understanding science, evidence and analysis will be key to adequately addressing the threats and finding solutions. An evidence-based approach to policy has been needed for many years. Under-appreciating science and evidence leads to unmitigated risks, as we have seen with climate change.

The human future involves us all. Shaping it requires a collaborative, inclusive and diverse discussion. We should heed advice from political and social scientists on how to engage all people in this conversation.

Imagination, creativity and new narratives will be needed for challenges that test our civil society and humanity. The bushfire smoke over the summer was unprecedented, and COVID-19 is a new virus.

If our policymakers and government had spent more time using the available climate science to understand and then imagine the potential risks of the 2019-20 summer, we would have recognised the potential for a catastrophic season and would likely have been able to prepare better. Unprecedented events are not always unexpected.

This photo from December shows NSW Rural Fire Service crews protecting properties as the Wrights Creek fire approaches Mangrove Mountain, north of Sydney. DAN HIMBRECHTS/AAP

Prepare for the long road

The short-termism of our political process needs to be circumvented. We must consider how our actions today will resonate for generations to come.

The commission’s report highlights the failure of governments to address these threats and particularly notes the short-term thinking that has increasingly dominated Australian and global politics. This has seriously undermined our potential to decrease risks such as climate change.

The shift from short to longer term thinking can began at home and in our daily lives. We should make decisions today that acknowledge the future, and practise this not only in our own lives but also demand it of our policy makers.

We’re living in unprecedented times. The catastrophic and existential risks for humanity are serious and multifaceted. And this conversation is the most important one we have today.

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Lethal Heating: The Story Of Our Time

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 04:07:00 +1000

Columbia Journalism Review - Kyle Pope

Reporters covering the climate crisis must be more than stenographers of tragedy

Kyle Pope is the editor in chief and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review.

Journalism has always been good at fast. The home team won. An old woman was shot. A president was elected. The quicker a story moves, the more compressed the drama, the better we are at reporting it.

Slow is harder. Stories that contain subtlety, that evolve, that don’t have an ending—those aren’t our strength. Racism, systemic poverty, the long-term effects of outdated policy—these are subjects that we’ve consistently failed to get our arms around. We chase the immediate, the ephemeral, and ignore the seismic, the fundamental.

The reasons are understandable. Reporting on an event is easier than becoming deeply immersed, over time, in complex characters and bureaucracies. On television, time is tight; in print, space is limited. The gratification in quick hits is shallow but fast. Over the past decade, the encroachment of social media has caused newsroom budgets and attention spans to shrink. Often, clicks replace our consciences as the arbiters of news.

That’s also inexcusable. No longer is the value of news in saying what happened yesterday. (We’ve got Twitter for that.) The task at hand is to examine events carefully and deeply—to think of a moment not in isolation, but as part of a broader context. When, last year, California was overwhelmed by wildfires, only 3 percent of TV news reports mentioned that climate change might have had something to do with the intensity of the damage. For the most part, reporters were mere stenographers of tragedy.

I am convinced that journalism’s failure to properly report the climate story will be recorded as one of its great humiliations. Since 1988, when James Hansen, a scientist at NASA, sat before Congress and warned the United States of the effects of a warming planet, news organizations have dithered and delayed and put off critical reporting on what’s happening to the earth. They have allowed themselves to be spun by oil industry PR campaigns, convinced themselves that the science is complicated and contested (it’s not), and rested on the idea that the subject is too abstract and depressing for their audiences to handle (again, false).

The result has been a massive media fail: In 2012, researchers at Media Matters found that US news organizations gave forty times more coverage to the Kardashians than to rising sea levels. During the 2016 campaign, reporters neglected to ask a single climate question in the three presidential debates. In 2018, broadcast news outlets gave more airtime to the royal baby than to the warming earth.

In the fall of 2019, however, we began to see things shift. The climate story seemed to be moving from slow to fast, as the effects of the crisis were becoming impossible for even the most stubborn newsrooms to ignore. Floods in Venice and droughts in India were ready-made for the evening news. Devastating fires in California and Australia led news broadcasts around the world. Mass protests and their student leaders adorned magazine covers. By the time Greta Thunberg, the sixteen-year-old climate activist, faced the United Nations at its Climate Action Summit, in New York City, and asked “How dare you?” the world, and its news media, were listening.

At this late hour there has, finally, been an awakening in journalism to the grim reality of climate change. The question now is how to tell the story. Can we ensure that the disasters we watch unfold are contextualized and explained? Will we hold the villains of the crisis accountable? Are we able to write about solutions to problems without trivializing them? How can we be fast and slow? The matter of whether or not the climate story should be told is settled: we must. This issue of CJR is focused on ways of doing the job.

A year ago, frustrated by journalism’s persistent silence on the fate of the natural world, CJR teamed up with The Nation to launch Covering Climate Now, an initiative to encourage more and better climate coverage. The Guardian quickly signed up as our first media partner. Together, we set out to understand why news outlets weren’t doing more—and to help them improve.

We tried to keep our initial request modest. We knew that few newsrooms had money in the budget to add climate reporters, and we understood that the complexity of the story—slow versus fast—was working against us. So our ask was simple: we wanted newsrooms to commit to upping their game for a week, stretching themselves to do more climate reporting than they would normally, and then report back to us on what they learned.

We debuted in April, led by Mark Hertsgaard, my partner on the initiative and now Covering Climate Now’s executive director. We targeted the second week of September, during the UN Climate Action Summit, for the coverage experiment. Over the spring and summer, we talked to editors and reporters representing newsrooms from around the world. We learned that there was a wide consensus that more coverage was needed—few journalists (outside the right-wing echo chamber) were in denial about the importance of the climate story. Staffers, young ones in particular, had long been pushing their organizations to do more.

But news outlets still held back, for three main reasons. First, there was a pernicious view, particularly in television, that reporting on the climate story was a political act that could turn off conservative audiences. Second, newsrooms were convinced that they simply didn’t have the staff to do more climate coverage at a time when core beats—police, courts, city hall—go uncovered. And third, reporters simply did not know where to start: they lacked training that would help them interpret climate science, they struggled to find local angles to global narratives, or they didn’t see how to connect climate change to the stories they already follow every day.

On the first point, we hoped that CJR’s endorsement—and the fact that mainstream organizations like CBS News were involved in the effort—could provide cover for newsroom managers worried about how their climate reporting would be perceived. On the resource question, we never asked anyone to add to their payroll. Instead, we encouraged them to rethink their existing beats, to make everyone in the newsroom a climate journalist—from those on the news desk to sports to business to culture. The last concern—that news organizations, even large ones, didn’t know where to begin—seemed at first depressing, but then gave us hope. If they were ill-equipped to tell the most important story of our time, we would provide them with tools.

Our modest start—a plea for attention—yielded astonishing results. On the appointed week in September, more than three hundred news organizations participated in Covering Climate Now, including some of the most widely read in the world. Together, they published or broadcast more than 3,600 stories for a combined audience of more than a billion people. According to Google Trends, climate searches that September were the highest they had been in Google’s history. Since then, the number of our partners has grown past four hundred, and their combined audience approaches two billion people. We are just beginning to build a network capable of informing the world that it’s not too late to save ourselves.

We are just beginning to build a network capable of informing the world that it’s not too late to save ourselves.

Our hope is that this magazine can begin to supply some answers about what’s needed for climate journalism to be effective. We hear from Emily Atkin, a climate reporter who felt constrained by traditional forms of storytelling (“It was difficult to hide my sense of alarm,” she explains), and Michael Specte r, a writer who believes in the ability of facts to convey the severity of the crisis.

E. Tammy Kim reports from the Doomsday Clock–setting convention of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which may be the only publication, she writes, “to cover climate change with an approach that is explicitly existential.” Alexandria Neason goes back to her childhood home in Hawai‘i, where well-intentioned climate journalism focuses on tourists and ignores indigenous people.

Betsy Morais, CJR’s managing editor and the guiding force behind the magazine, writes about the difficulties—and opportunities—for reporting on the climate in China, where, as the coronavirus reminds us, censorship is rife. I talk to George Miller, the director of Mad Max, about what reporters can learn from movies when it comes to crafting climate stories. Elsewhere in the issue, we trace climate journalism across Alaska, shadow a fire reporter in California, and lament the ubiquity of the polar bear as a climate change mascot.

Clearly, the climate crisis can’t be contained in a single issue of this, or any, magazine. But we can use this occasion to survey the work being done and to consider how we can do better. It’s as good an expression of CJR’s mission as there is.

We also have worked to produce a magazine that takes its subject matter to heart. If you are holding this issue in print, you are reading it on 100 percent recycled postconsumer stock. The inks we’ve used are vegetable- and soy-based. Allied Printing, the company we’ve hired to produce the magazine, has a zero-carbon footprint; nearly three-quarters of the energy used at its facility comes from wind and solar power. To further minimize our climate impact, we’ve elected to print half the number of issues we typically would, which helps us offset the costs of eco-friendly printing and distribution. We have also made every effort possible to reduce travel for our writers and photographers.

We have reached a turning point for journalism and the planet. Old ideas that had dampened our attention to climate change—that the subject was too polarizing or too complicated or a money-loser—have been proven wrong. Old forms of storytelling—fast, without helping readers draw crucial connections—are not what’s needed to confront the crisis we face. We owe it to our audience, and our conscience, to be more thoughtful. Climate change is the story of our time. Journalism will be judged by how it chronicles the devastating reality.

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Lethal Heating: (AU) Proposed Queensland Coal-Fired Power Plant Under Cloud Over Emissions And Financing

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 04:05:00 +1000

The Guardian - Ben Smee

New information casts doubt on claims about environmental merit and commercial viability of Collinsville station

A disused power station at Collinsville. Sources say carbon emissions from a new coal-fired plant would be comparable to generators built 15 to 20 years ago. Photograph: Ben Smee/The Guardian

Carbon emissions from a new coal-fired power station at Collinsville in north Queensland would be comparable to generators built in the state 15 to 20 years ago, according to sources familiar with the proponent’s submissions to the federal government.

Guardian Australia has learned the company behind the proposal, Shine Energy, has held discussions about obtaining a concessional infrastructure loan from the federal government via the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility.

In February the government awarded Shine $4.4m to conduct a feasibility study. The grant was broadly considered a concession to pro-coal Queensland Nationals MPs.

The new information about the proposal – obtained by sources with knowledge of Shine’s closely guarded business case and other information submitted to the federal government before it was awarded the feasibility study grant – casts doubt on key public claims about the environmental merit and commercial viability of a Collinsville plant.

Shine said it could not respond to questions, claiming that details of its proposal were confidential. The company indicated that aspects of the project might have changed since it submitted documentation to the federal government but it would not provide any detail.

The company has pitched its Collinsville coal proposal as having the potential to reduce carbon emissions by allowing the closure of higher-emitting power stations elsewhere in the state.

But a lack of available water allocation at Collinsville poses a technical challenge for the financing, design and construction of any plant that would emit a lower proportion of carbon, compared with the last generation of coal plants built in Queensland – which has the newest fleet in Australia.

Shine has submitted information that shows that by using a dry-cooling system the plant’s emissions intensity would be comparable to the last two plants built in Queensland – Kogan Creek, commissioned in 2007, and Millmerran, commissioned in 2002. Both produce emissions at a rate slightly above .80 tonnes of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour.

Sources say Shine’s studies identified it could pollute about 10% to 15% less carbon dioxide if it built a plant with a wet-cooling system, which requires large volumes of water.

Plans to build a large dam at the nearby Urannah Creek have been touted as a way to supply water to heavy industry, including a coal-fired power station. But while the Urannah Dam is backed by many of the same political and business interests as the proposed power station, it is bitterly opposed by local Indigenous traditional owners, including Shine Energy and some of its directors.

The Shine Energy chief executive, Ash Dodd, told Guardian Australia in February that the power generator proposal would not rely on the Urannah Dam.

“We as Birri and Widi traditional owners stand opposed to the [Urannah Dam] project as it will have a major environmental impact on our sacred rivers and all water rights belong to our people.”

Richie Merzian, the climate and energy director at the Australia Institute, said the federal government had spent $1.3bn attempting to improve the emissions intensity of coal since 2003.

“It is damning that the best technology they can find now has the same emissions intensity as plants built 15 years ago,” Merzian said. “If the best they can do is build another plant like Kogan Creek, it will do little for reliability, given this plant is the most unreliable on the grid per unit of energy.”

Dodd has raised the prospect that Collinsville could allow for the closure older, dirtier plants, including the privately operated Gladstone power station (.95 tonnes CO2 per MWh), though the Queensland government is firmly opposed to that suggestion and Gladstone has commercial energy supply contracts running until 2029.

The state’s opposition to the Collinsville plant could also prove problematic for Shine in its efforts to obtain finance.

In interviews, Dodd has said the company has held discussions with overseas-based investors and would apply for Naif financing. Guardian Australia understands Shine is pursuing a concessional federal loan from the Naif program, which it expects could then catalyse additional interest from private investors.

The Queensland government holds an effective veto over any Naif loan to a project in the state.

A Naif spokesman said it “cannot comment on whether or not it has been approached by particular entities in respect of particular projects”.

Shine Energy’s shares are worth $1,000 on paper and the company will require about $2bn in outside financing to build the power generator.

In addition to seeking Naif funding, Shine has applied for federal government underwriting against potential future losses. It was not named among shortlisted projects for a federal energy underwriting program.

Energy sector analysts say the extent to which Shine has asked for government subsidy should dismiss outright any suggestion that a coal-fired power station at Collinsville could be independently viable.

“Large subsidies are the only way they can get it up and running,” said Tim Buckley, the director of energy finance studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “It’s a project that’s entirely unbankable by any private financier. It’s 100% an ideological exercise, there’s no commercial viability.”

Shine’s director of marketing and communications, Kelli Cohen, warned Guardian Australia against printing “inaccurate information” but said the company “can not respond” to any aspect of this story due to commercial confidentiality.

This is despite Dodd previously speaking about emissions intensity, potential funding sources, government subsidies and other technical details in interviews on Sky News.

“You have not been given an up to date project brief from your source,” Cohen said.

Shine did not respond to subsequent attempts to clarify what details might have changed.

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Lethal Heating: (AU) No Water, No Leadership: New Murray Darling Basin Report Reveals States’ Climate Gamble

Mon, 27 Apr 2020 04:10:00 +1000

The Conversation - Daniel Connell

Dean Lewins/ AAP

Dr Daniel Connell is a Research Fellow at the Resources, Environment and Development Program, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University. He specialises in governance issues relating to trans-boundary rivers. Dr Connell has written extensively about the Murray Darling Basin, most recently in Basin Futures, a book co-edited with Quentin Grafton and published by ANU Press.

A report investigating how states share water in the Murray Darling Basin describes a fascinating contrast between state cultures – in particular, risk-averse South Australia and buccaneering New South Wales.

Perhaps surprising is the report’s sparse discussion of the Murray Darling Basin Plan, which has been the focus of irrigators’ anger and denunciation by National Party leaders: Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack and NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro.

John Littleproud commissioned Mick Keelty to investigate the changing inflow of water in the Murray Darling Basin. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

In general terms, the Murray Darling Basin Plan was originally intended to make water management in the Murray Darling Basin more environmentally sustainable. Its critics see it as a restraint on development, and complain it has taken water away from irrigators during a time of extreme drought.

In response to McCormack and Barliaro’s criticisms of the plan in late 2019, federal water minister (and senior National Party figure) David Littleproud commissioned Mick Keelty as Interim Inspector General of MDB Water Resources.

For the new report, Keelty investigated the changing distribution of “inflows” – water flowing into the River Murray in the southern states.

Climate change has brought the inflow to just a trickle. This dramatic reduction over the past 20 years is what Keelty has described as “the most telling finding”.

He also investigated the reserve policies under which the three states choose – or don’t choose – to hold back water in Hume and Dartmouth Dams to manage future droughts.

Keelty says there’s little transparency or clarity about how much water states are allocated under the Murray Darling Basin Agreement (the arrangement for sharing water between the states which underpins the Basin Plan). This failure in communication and leadership across such a vital system must change.

Sharing water across three states

One major finding of Keelty’s inquiry is that the federal government has little power to change the MDB Agreement between the three states, which was first approved in 1914-15. Any amendment requires the approval of all three governments.

Murray-Darling Basin review finds declining inflows, toxic debate and need for education

“This (reduced rain and inflows) remains the primary driver of reduced water availability, and there is little anyone can do to influence when and how much, it rains” https://t.co/T2HrLRkO45
— Sam Heagney (@samheagney) April 17, 2020

To increase the volume of water provided to NSW irrigators, South Australia and Victoria would need to agree to reduce the volumes supplied to their own entitlement holders. That will not happen.

Why has the agreement lasted so long?

Over the past century it has proved robust under a wide range of conditions. Its central principle is to share water with a proportion-of-available-flow formula, giving each state a percentage of whatever is available, no matter whether it’s a lot, or not much.

After receiving its share of the River Murray flows, each state is then free to manage its allocation as it wishes.

Historically, South Australia and Victoria have chosen to reserve or hold back a larger proportion of their shares each year in Hume and Dartmouth dams to use in future droughts, compared with New South Wales.

In part this difference derives from the long-term water needs of orchards and vines in South Australia and Victoria, in contrast to annual crops such as rice and cotton in New South Wales.

Deputy prime minister Michael McCormack has publicly condemned the MDB plan. Mick Tsikas/ AAP

As a result, South Australia and Victoria have a higher proportion of high security entitlements. That means they receive 100% most years. Only in extreme drought years is their allocation reduced.

NSW, on the other hand, has a higher proportion of low security general entitlements. In dry and normal years they receive a proportion of their entitlements. Only in wet years do they get the full 100%. (These differences in reliability are reflected in the cost of entitlements on the water market.)

Reliability of water supply

What’s more, each state makes its own decision about how its state allocation is shared between its entitlement holders (95% of water goes to irrigators the rest supplies towns and industry).

South Australia chooses to distribute a much smaller proportion to its entitlement holders than New South Wales. It also restricted the number of licences in the 1970s. That combination ensures a very high level of reliability in supply. Victoria took a similar approach.

But New South Wales did not restrict licences until the 1990s. It also recognised unused entitlements, so further reducing the frequency of years in which any individual would receive their full allocation of water.

Mick Keelty’s report into the southern Murray-Darling Basin is out today. Shines another light on the impact of climate change on inflows in NSW. Three recs for us. We’ll fast track implementation and increase transparency with the support from the states. https://t.co/6xauKERGK8 pic.twitter.com/YmqttkVatl
— MD Basin Authority (@MD_Basin_Auth) April 17, 2020

When climate change is taken into account these differences between the three states result in their irrigators having significantly different risk profiles.

The climate change threat to the basin is very real

Despite climate denial in the National Party, the threat is very real in the MDB. The report describes a massive reduction in inflows over the past 20 years, approximately half compared with the previous century. One drought could be an aberration, but two begins to look like a pattern.

The report also suggests that in many cases irrigator expectations of what should be normal were formed during the wet period Australia experienced between the second world war and the 1990s.

Added to this have been business decisions by many irrigators to sell their entitlements and rely on the water market, a business model based on what now seems like unrealistic inflow expectations.

In effect, successive New South Wales governments – a significant part of the state’s irrigation sector in the southern part of the state and the National Party – gambled against the climate and are now paying a high price.

In desperation, they’re focusing on alternative sources. This includes the water in Hume and Dartmouth held under the reserves policy of the two other states; environmental entitlements managed by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder; the very large volume of water lost to evaporation in the lower lakes in South Australia; and the possibility of savings resulting from changes to management of the system by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.

NSW governments have gambled against climate change and are now paying a high price. AAP Image/Dean Lewins

Failure in leadership and communication

For reasons already outlined, the state reserves policy is not likely to change and use of the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder environmental water entitlements would not be permitted under current legislation. Management of the lower lakes is being reviewed through another investigation so is not discussed in the report.

The report also states that management of the MDB Authority is subject to regular detailed assessment by state governments, and they have assessed its performance as satisfactory.

However the report was critical of the performance of all MDB governments with regard to leadership and communications suggesting that failures in those areas were largely responsible for the public concern which triggered its investigation.

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Lethal Heating: The Solutions To The Climate Crisis No One Is Talking About

Mon, 27 Apr 2020 04:07:00 +1000

Common Dreams - Robert Reich

Make no mistake: the simultaneous crisis of inequality and climate is no fluke. Both are the result of decades of deliberate choices made, and policies enacted, by ultra-wealthy and powerful corporations.

"We deserve a world without fossil fuels," writes Reich. "A world in which workers and communities thrive and our shared climate comes before industry profits." (Image: Inequality Media)

Robert Reich is the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies.
He served as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration.
Robert Reich is the author of many books, including the best-sellers Aftershock, The Work of Nations, Beyond Outrage, and Saving Capitalism.

Both our economy and the environment are in crisis.

Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few while the majority of Americans struggle to get by.

The climate crisis is worsening inequality, as those who are most economically vulnerable bear the brunt of flooding, fires, and disruptions of supplies of food, water, and power.

At the same time, environmental degradation and climate change are themselves byproducts of widening inequality. The political power of wealthy fossil fuel corporations has stymied action on climate change for decades.

Focused only on maximizing their short-term interests, those corporations are becoming even richer and more powerful — while sidelining workers, limiting green innovation, preventing sustainable development, and blocking direct action on our dire climate crisis.

Make no mistake: the simultaneous crisis of inequality and climate is no fluke. Both are the result of decades of deliberate choices made, and policies enacted, by ultra-wealthy and powerful corporations.

We can address both crises by doing four things:

►First, create green jobs

Investing in renewable energy could create millions of family sustaining, union jobs and build the infrastructure we need for marginalized communities to access clean water and air.
The transition to a renewable energy-powered economy can add 550,000 jobs each year while saving the US economy $78 billion through 2050.
In other words, a Green New Deal could turn the climate crisis into an opportunity - one that both addresses the climate emergency and creates a fairer and more equitable society.

►Second, stop dirty energy

A massive investment in renewable energy jobs isn’t enough to combat the climate crisis. If we are going to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we must tackle the problem at its source: Stop digging up and burning more oil, gas, and coal.

The potential carbon emissions from these fossil fuels in the world’s currently developed fields and mines would take us well beyond the 1.5°C increased warming that Nobel Prize winning global scientists tell us the planet can afford. Given this, it’s absurd to allow fossil fuel corporations to start new dirty energy projects.

Even as fossil fuel companies claim to be pivoting toward clean energy, they are planning to invest trillions of dollars in new oil and gas projects that are inconsistent with global commitments to limit climate change. And over half of the industry’s expansion is projected to happen in the United States. Allowing these projects means locking ourselves into carbon emissions we can’t afford now, let alone in the decades to come.

Even if the U.S. were to transition to 100 percent renewable energy today, continuing to dig fossil fuels out of the ground will lead us further into climate crisis. If the U.S. doesn’t stop now, whatever we extract will simply be exported and burned overseas.

We will all be affected, but the poorest and most vulnerable among us will bear the brunt of the devastating impacts of climate change.

►Third, kick fossil fuel companies out of our politics

For decades, companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP have been polluting our democracy by pouring billions of dollars into our politics and bankrolling elected officials to enact policies that protect their profits.

The oil and gas industry spent over $103 million on the 2016 federal elections alone. And that’s just what they were required to report: that number doesn’t include the untold amounts of “dark money” they’ve been using to buy-off politicians and corrupt our democracy. The most conservative estimates still put their spending at 10 times that of environmental groups and the renewable energy industry.

As a result, American taxpayers are shelling out $20 billion a year to bankroll oil and gas projects – a huge transfer of wealth to the top. And that doesn’t even include hundreds of billions of dollars of indirect subsidies that cost every United States citizen roughly $2,000 a year. This has to stop.

And we’ve got to stop giving away public lands for oil and gas drilling. In 2018, under Trump, the Interior Department made $1.1 billion selling public land leases to oil and gas companies, an all-time record – triple the previous 2008 record, totaling more than 1.5 million acres for drilling alone, threatening multiple cultural sites and countless wildlife.

As recently as last September, the Trump administration opened 1.56 million acres of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, threatening Indigenous cultural heritage and hundreds of species that call it home.

That’s not all. The ban on exporting crude oil should be reintroduced and extended to other fossil fuels. The ban, in place for 40 years, was lifted in 2015, just days after the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement. After years of campaigning by oil executives, industry heads, and their army of lobbyists, the fossil fuel industry finally got its way.

We can’t wait for these changes to be introduced in 5 or 10 years time — we need them now.

►Fourth, require the fossil fuel companies that have profited from environmental injustice compensate the communities they’ve harmed

As if buying-off our democracy wasn’t enough, these corporations have also deliberately misled the public for years on the amount of damage their products have been causing.

For instance, as early as 1977, Exxon’s own scientists were warning managers that fossil fuel use would warm the planet and cause irreparable damage.

In the 1980s, Exxon shut down its internal climate research program and shifted to funding a network of advocacy groups, lobbying arms, and think tanks whose sole purpose was to cloud public discourse and block action on the climate crisis.

The five largest oil companies now spend about $197 million a year on ad campaigns claiming they care about the climate — all the while massively increasing their spending on oil and gas extraction.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans, especially poor, Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, already have to fight to drink clean water and breathe clean air as their communities are devastated by climate-fueled hurricanes, floods, and fires. As of 2015, nearly 21 million people relied on community water systems that violated health-based quality standards.

Going by population, that’s essentially 200 Flint, Michigans, happening all at once. If we continue on our current path, many more communities run the risk of becoming “sacrifice zones,” where citizens are left to survive the toxic aftermath of industrial activity with little, if any, help from the entities responsible for creating it.

Climate denial and rampant pollution are not victimless crimes. Fossil fuel corporations must be held accountable, and be forced to pay for the damage they’ve wrought.

If these solutions sound drastic to you, it’s because they are. They have to be if we have any hope of keeping our planet habitable. The climate crisis is not a far-off apocalyptic nightmare — it is our present day.

Australia’s bushfires wiped out a billion animals, California’s fire season wreaks more havoc every year, and record-setting storms are tearing through our communities like never before.

Scientists tell us we have 10 years left to dramatically reduce emissions. We have no room for meek half-measures wrapped up inside giant handouts to the fossil fuel industry.

We deserve a world without fossil fuels. A world in which workers and communities thrive and our shared climate comes before industry profits. Working together, I know we can make it happen. We have no time to waste.

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Lethal Heating: Dutch Officials Reveal Measures To Cut Emissions After Court Ruling

Mon, 27 Apr 2020 04:05:00 +1000

The Guardian - Jonathan Watts

Green activists claim victory as government will spend €3bn on new climate initiatives

Marjan Minnesma with climate activists who were campaigning outside the Dutch Supreme Court last year during the case. Photograph: Ana Fernandez/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

The Dutch government has announced measures including huge cuts to coal use, garden greening and limits on livestock herds as part of its plan to lower emissions to comply with a supreme court ruling.

Climate litigation activists described the move as “an enormous win”.

The small non-profit Urgenda Foundation, which filed the initial legal challenge in 2013, said this and earlier compliance measures totalled about €3bn euros, which confirms the impact of the world’s most successful climate lawsuit to date.

Under the new package, coal-fired power stations will have to scale back or close completely, cattle and pig herds will be reduced, subsidies will be provided to home owners to use less concrete and more plants in their gardens, and industry will have to find alternatives for several polluting processes.

“That is an enormous win,” said Marjan Minnesma, the director of Urgenda, which has 15-staff and operates out of two former school classrooms. “For many people this will give hope that it is possible to use the law as a strategic instrument for change.”

After a seven-year legal battle, the supreme court in the Hague ordered the government in December to reduce emissions by 15 megatonnes in 2020.

The judges accepted Urgenda’s argument that climate change posed a dangerous threat to human rights and the Netherlands needed to accelerate its actions to meet its international commitment of a 25% cut compared with 1990.

To comply, the government has adopted 30 of the proposals in Urgenda’s “54 Climate Solutions Plan”, which was drawn up in collaboration with 800 civil society groups and other organisations.

The headline change is a 75% reduction in capacity at the country’s three coal-fired power stations, all of which have been opened in the past five years. The government is also reportedly in negotiations to close one of these plants.

In addition, it will provide about €400m for household energy saving measures such as double glazing, €360m to compensate farmers for livestock reductions, and €30m for LED lighting in greenhouses.

Along with earlier steps – including lower speed limits to control emissions of nitrogen dioxide, €2bn for rooftop solar and other forms of renewable energy, solar panels on all school rooftops, more sustainable forestry and changes in the use of concrete, the measures are expected to save 8 megatonnes of emissions this year and provide extra benefits in terms of air quality and wildlife habitat.

Minnesma said this should be seen as a “promising start” because the government is still about 4 megatonnes short of its obligations. She said the coronavirus lockdown should not be used as an excuse to backpedal.

The package was presented to parliament on Friday afternoon. The government said the measures would provide an economic stimulus and also help to reduce nitrogen pollution, which has been the subject of other legal actions.

MPs said the package should inspire activists across the world to pursue litigation against governments that drag their feet.

“Without a doubt this should encourage climate lawsuits in other countries. It’s a shining example,” said Green party politician Tom van der Lee. “This package wouldn’t be there without an order from the highest court. Without that verdict, the government would have chosen a slower trajectory.”

The environmental law charity ClientEarth said the result was unprecedented in Europe and testament to the impact of climate litigation, which is spreading around the world. “The Urgenda case should be considered a groundbreaking success, not just legally, but for driving real world action on climate change,” Sophie Marjanac, a ClientEarth lawyer.

The Dutch legal system’s ease of access and political independence of judges helped to make the case possible. If Urgenda had lost, they would only have had to pay €18,000 rather than the government’s extensive costs.

The Urgenda case has been closely watched around the world. While climate activists have welcomed the outcome, they urge the Netherlands to raise ambition beyond 2020 compliance with the orders of the supreme court.

“The Netherlands now needs to lay out a strategy to reach net zero by around the middle of this century,” said Bob Ward, policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

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Lethal Heating: (AU) 'Kick Them Into Action': Fire Group Takes EPA To Court Over Climate

Sun, 26 Apr 2020 04:13:00 +1000

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

Lisa Roberts spent 25 years building a native plant business that was as sustainable as they come, with off-grid solar power and water harvesting, only to see it go up in flames in the recent bushfires.

Her home and nursery in Wandella in southern NSW reduced to rubble, Ms Roberts fled to Canberra, powerless to act as fires threatened another venture in nearby Pialligo. Living in the smoke-choked capital also damaged her vocal cords, which have still not recovered.

Lisa Roberts and her partner lost their home and nursery in Wandella in summer's bushfires, prompting her to lead a novel legal case against the NSW Environment Protection Authority. Credit: Lisa Roberts

"A part of me totally rages at the world for its totally inadequate response to climate change," Ms Roberts said. "Everybody's safety is at risk."

That anger is being now channelled into a legal challenge against the NSW Environment Protection Authority. Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action, of which Ms Roberts is a member, began the suit last week with the NSW Environmental Defenders Office "to kick [the EPA] into action", she said.

Today we're announcing a new case against the NSW EPA.

Our clients, the Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action, seek to compel the EPA to fulfill their duty + protect NSW communities by regulating greenhouse gases that cause catastrophic climate change. https://t.co/EnQusvDm8x pic.twitter.com/3RoDQdIRbR— Environmental Defenders Office (@EDOLawyers) April 19, 2020

EDO chief executive David Morris said the case, in the Land and Environment Court, would seek to force the EPA, which does not have a climate policy, to use its powers to keep communities safe from the increasingly severe impacts of a warming world.

Mr Morris said the EPA was chosen as a test case among similar agencies nationally in part because of a section of the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997.

That section requires the agency to “develop environmental quality objectives, guidelines and policies to ensure environment protection”.

"It's an opportunity for the EPA to recognise they have a legal obligation to take action," he said. "They should have a policy and a plan to address the greatest threat to the environment."

'A part of me totally rages': Lisa Roberts, a horticulturist entrepreneur, is part of a legal challenge against the NSW Environment Protection Authority after bushfires hit her multi-million businesses hard.

An EPA spokesman said the agency had received court documents from the EDO "and is considering them". A spokesman for NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean said it was "inappropriate to comment" on an ongoing legal matter.

The Land and Environment Court has made significant climate-related decisions before, including in February last year when it found the final, so-called scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions produced by burning coal should be taken into account when considering the environmental impacts of new mines.

Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action chairwoman Jo Dodds says she can't look at the environment without imagining how it will look when it is burnt.

Bushfire Survivors chairwoman Jo Dodds, who is also a Bega Shire councillor, said the group's 30-odd members had endured fires from the 2003 blazes in Canberra, Black Saturday in Victoria in 2009 and the fires that devastated parts of her town in Tathra two years ago.

Cr Dodds said the legal action was aimed at making the EPA "live up to its remit".

The agency "needs to have adequate policies around climate change", including setting limits on greenhouse emissions and enforcing them, she said.

Cr Dodds said she had to evacuate to the Bega River in 2018 and watch on as aerial water bombers tried to save hers and other homes from being engulfed in flames.

That experience, and the past season's endless fire threat, had left lingering emotional scars.
"I'm always looking at the environment and imagining what it will look like when it burns," she said.

At the time, the Tathra bushfires in March 2018 seemed unseasonal because they erupted in autumn. Last fire season, though, ran from July until February 2020. Credit: Suzie Duffy

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Lethal Heating: (AU) If We Can Put A Man On The Moon, We Can Save The Great Barrier Reef

Sun, 26 Apr 2020 04:10:00 +1000

Credit: Shutterstock

Scientists recently confirmed the Great Barrier Reef suffered another serious bleaching event last summer—the third in five years. Dramatic intervention to save the natural wonder is clearly needed.

First and foremost, this requires global greenhouse gas emissions to be slashed. But the right combination of technological and biological interventions, deployed with care at the right time and scale, are also critical to securing the reef's future.

This could include methods designed to shade and cool the reef, techniques to help corals adapt to warmer temperatures, ways to help damaged reefs recover, and smart systems that target interventions to the most strategically beneficial locations.

Implementing such measures across the breadth of the reef—the world's biggest reef ecosystem—will not be easy, or cheap. In fact, we believe the scale of the task is greater than the Apollo 11 moon landing mission in 1969—but not impossible.

That mission was a success, not because a few elements worked to plan, but because of the integration, coordination and alignment of every element of the mission's goal: be the first to land and walk on the moon, and then fly home safely.

Half a century later, facing the ongoing decline of the Great Barrier Reef, we can draw important lessons from that historic human achievement.

Research into breeding coral hybrids for heat-stress resistance could help restore parts of the reef. Credit: Marie Roman/AIMS, Author provided

Intervening to save the reef

The recently released Reef Restoration and Adaptatio … pt feasibility study shows Australia could feasibly, and with reasonable probability of success, intervene to help the reef adapt to and recover from the effects of climate change.

The study, of which we were a part, involved more than 100 leading coral reef scientists, modellers, economists, engineers, business strategists, social scientists, decision scientists and reef managers.

It shows how new and existing interventions, supported by the best available research and development, could help secure a future for the reef.

We must emphasise that interventions to help the reef adapt to and recover from climate change will not, alone, save it. Success also depends on reducing global greenhouse emissions as quickly as possible. But the hands-on measures we're proposing could help buy time for the reef.

More than 100 coral reef scientists took part in the feasibility study. Credit: Nick Thake/AIMS, Author provided

Cloud brightening to heat-tolerant corals

Our study identified 160 possible interventions that could help revive the reef, and build on its natural resilience. We've whittled it down to the 43 most effective and realistic.

Possible interventions for further research and development include brightening clouds with salt crystals to shade and cool corals; ways to increase the abundance of naturally heat-tolerant corals in local populations, such as through aquarium-based selective breeding and release; and methods to promote faster recovery on damaged reefs, such as deploying structures designed to stabilise reef rubble.

But there will be no single silver bullet solution. The feasibility study showed that methods working in combination, along with water quality improvement and crown-of-thorns starfish control, will provide the best results.

Harder than landing on the moon

There are four reasons why saving the Great Barrier Reef in coming decades could be more challenging than the 1969 moon mission.

Field testing the heat resistant coral hybrids in the Great Barrier Reef. Credit: Kate Green/AIMS, Author provided

First, warming events have already driven the reef into decline with back-to-back bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, and now again in 2020. The next major event is now only just around the corner.

Second, current emission reduction pledges would see the world warm by 2.3-3.5℃ relative to pre-industrial levels. This climate scenario, which is not the worst case, would be beyond the range that allows today's coral reef ecosystems to function.

Without swift action, the prospect for the world's coral reefs is bleak, with most expected to become seriously degraded before mid-century.

Third, we still have work to do to control local pressures, including water quality and marine pests crown-of-thorns starfish.

And fourth, the inherent complexity of natural systems, particularly ones as diverse as coral reefs, provides an additional challenge not faced by NASA engineers 50 years ago.

So keeping the Great Barrier Reef, let alone the rest of the world's reefs, safe from climate change will dwarf the challenge of any space mission. But there is hope.

The Great Barrier Reef has been hit by consecutive bleaching events – restoring it may be harder than landing on the moon. Credit: Shutterstock

We must start now

The federal government recently re-announced A$100 million from the Reef Trust Partnership towards a major research and development effort for this program. This will be augmented by contributions of A$50m from research institutions, and additional funding from international philanthropists.

Our study shows that under a wide range of future emission scenarios, the program is very likely to be worth the effort, more so if the world meets the Paris target and rapidly cuts greenhouse gas emissions.

What's more, economic analyses included in the feasibility study show successful Great Barrier Reef intervention at scale could create benefits to Australia of between A$11 billion and A$773 billion over a 60-year period, with much of it flowing to regional economies and Traditional Owner communities.

And perhaps more importantly, if Australia is successful in this effort, we can lead the world in a global effort to save these natural wonders bequeathed to us across the ages. We must start the journey now. If we wait, it may be too late.

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Lethal Heating: The Pandemic Could Be A Call To Action On Climate Change

Sun, 26 Apr 2020 04:05:00 +1000

Washington Post - Ishaan Tharoor

This combination photo shows Murcia, Spain, days before the national coronavirus lockdown on Feb. 29, left, and again weeks into the lockdown on April 23. (Maarcial Guillen/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

Amid its horrors and tragedies, the coronavirus pandemic has driven home a startling reality.

Travel bans and lockdowns have cleaned the globe, flushing the murk from Venice’s canals, clearing Delhi’s polluted smog, making distant snowy peaks visible for the first time in years from the shores of the Bosporus.

With humans in retreat, nature reclaimed what was once its own in whimsical ways: Goats strutted through villages, antlered deer grazed on manicured city lawns and mountain lions found perches by suburban fences.

U.S. scientists still predict 2020 will be the hottest year on record, even as experts forecast the largest annual drop in carbon emissions in modern history — a direct consequence of the pandemic’s freeze on human activity, trade and travel. The crisis isn’t uniformly good news for the planet: For example, satellite data shows that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is at its fastest pace in years, with environmental officials otherwise sidelined or preoccupied by the outbreak.

The pandemic is not just a reminder of the human impact on the environment, including the significance of man-made emissions on global warming and air pollution. It’s also similar: an imperceptible menace that knows no borders, overwhelms aging infrastructure and bedevils policymakers and politicians who struggle to grapple with the scale of the threat.

“A good way to think about the coronavirus pandemic is that it is like climate change at warp speed. What takes decades and centuries for the climate takes days or weeks for a contagious disease,” New York University climate economist Gernot Wagner wrote last month. “That speed focuses the mind and offers lessons in how to think about risk in an interconnected world.”

"We now must put our differences aside and cooperate and listen to the science and the experts." That's why we're supporting @WHO to prevent the next pandemic before it starts. Join us and @GretaThunberg and take the pledge to stay #TogetherAtHome: https://t.co/26xVXSb0qy pic.twitter.com/sqiJMrF3V2
— Global Citizen (@GlblCtzn) April 18, 2020

The question now is who’s learning what lessons.

The commemorations for the 50th annual Earth Day saw a litany of prominent climate campaigners link action on that front to the experience of the outbreak.

For years, climate scientists have been calling on governments to “flatten the curve” — that is, reduce emissions to lessen the likely catastrophic toll global warming will exact on societies in decades to come.

In the Boston Globe, former U.S. secretary of state John F. Kerry pointed to evidence suggesting climate change could be a “threat multiplier” for zoonotic and pandemic diseases. He also took aim at President Trump and other politicians who cling to positions outside the scientific consensus and impede collective action.

“Just as in today’s pandemic, progress has been halted by finger-pointing, denial, replacing real science with junk science, misinformation, and flat-out lies, elevating political hacks instead of scientists and experts, refusal to work with allies and even adversaries, and leaving states and cities to fend for themselves,” wrote Kerry.

“The coronavirus pandemic has delivered sharp and painful reminders of our collective vulnerability and the value of paying very close attention to reality,” wrote physicist Mark Buchanan. “If there’s any good to come out of the current tragedy, it may be in helping to persuade a few people to help tip the scales and get our leaders to take the next looming issue much more seriously.”

The Trump administration isn’t quite set on tipping the scales.

Stimulus money the White House has been empowered to spend in the pandemic’s aftermath may go to U.S. fossil fuel companies that were already in financial trouble before the crisis.

On Earth Day, Andrew Wheeler, Trump’s administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, sought to shift focus away from climate change to government efforts to curb pollution.

“We’re taking climate change seriously,” Wheeler told The Washington Post’s PowerUp newsletter. “But it’s not the only environmental issue that we face as a planet.”

But away from the White House, others are seeking to take the lead. Under the aegis of the World Economic Forum, major financial firms — including some that may help manage elements of the federal response to the pandemic — have pledged to divest from fossil fuels. Campaigners are calling for government stimulus to fund sustainable development projects that could build the green economy. The World Bank is proposing linking governments’ post-pandemic spending to greener infrastructure projects and future disaster-proofing.

NEW: Two thirds of Britons believe #ClimateChange is as serious as #COVID19 and a majority want it prioritised in an economic recovery https://t.co/6aNuPPk2P6 #EarthDay pic.twitter.com/mtrKgUF2bX
— Ipsos MORI (@IpsosMORI) April 22, 2020

In Washington, there’s a cautious hope that the urgency presented both by climate change and the pandemic may cool the geopolitical tensions between the United States and China and force greater global collaboration.

“We all breathe the same air and we’re all going to live with the same rising seas,” Michael Chertoff, a former head of the Department of Homeland Security in the George W. Bush administration, told Today’s WorldView during a webinar this week. “And whatever we may disagree about some things, we’re going to need to sit down with them and our like-minded allies and everybody else and figure out what can we do collectively to protect the global commons against either pandemic diseases or disastrous climate change.”

But, as Slate’s Joshua Keating noted, the opposite may well be true, given the growing hostility between both countries. He added that some right-wing parties elsewhere in the West have already seized on the threat of climate change not as a call for collective action, but as a justification for limiting migration and unraveling globalization.

“It’s not hard to imagine a future U.S. administration, rather than denying the increasingly obvious reality of climate change, using it to argue that the country needs tougher immigration controls and fewer refugees,” wrote Keating. “The alternative, they will argue, is to be overwhelmed by the human invaders and see our own natural resources depleted in the way other countries already have.”

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Lethal Heating: (AU) Two Thirds Of Citizens Around The World Agree Climate Change Is As Serious A Crisis As Covid-19 – Ipsos Survey

Sat, 25 Apr 2020 04:10:00 +1000

Ipsos - Climate Change

Most Australians support a green economic recovery from COVID-19.

Citizens want economic recovery actions to prioritise climate change.

A new Ipsos poll conducted in 14 countries shows widespread support for government actions to prioritise climate change in the economic recovery after COVID-19 with 65% globally agreeing that this is important.

For Australia, 57% agreed climate change should be prioritised in the economic recovery actions.

Furthermore, the survey finds that 71% of adults globally agree that, in the long term, climate change is as serious a crisis as COVID-19. While the majority of Australians (59%) agree climate change is as serious a crisis as COVID-19, this is well below the global average.

The survey was conducted online among more than 28,000 adults between April 16^th and April 19^th 2020.

A second Ipsos survey commissioned for Earth Day found that while climate change remains the most important environmental issue for citizens globally, they are no more likely to say they plan to make changes to their own environmental behaviours than they were six years ago.

The second survey was carried out online among more than 20,000 adults across 29 countries between Friday, February 21^st and March 6^th 2020.

Key Australian findings include:

Climate change remains the most important environmental issue to Australians. Two-in-five (42%) cited it as one of the three most important environmental issues facing the nation. This was consistent with the global trend; climate change is the number one environmental issue globally too (37% identified it as a top issue).
Also of concern to Australians are dealing with the amount of waste we generate (37%); future energy sources and supplies (29%); wildlife conservation (25%); and overpopulation (24%).
Globally, other environmental issues that are important to citizens are air pollution (33%) and dealing with the amount of waste we generate (32%), followed by deforestation (26%) and water pollution (25%). Concern for the top four issues has increased since two years ago.
A majority of the public globally (68%) agrees that if their governments do not act now to combat climate change, they will be failing their citizens. Australians feel similarly, 65% agreed Government inaction on climate change would be failing citizens.
More than half of Australians (55%) say they would be put off from voting for a political party whose policies do not take climate change seriously.

Comparison of this year’s findings highlight changing environmental priorities for Australians. In 2018, future energy sources and supplies was a top-three environmental concern for Australians (40% identified it as a top environmental issue, compared with 29% this year).

Climate change was the third most commonly mentioned issue for Australians in 2018 at 35%; and is the number one environmental issue this year, up by 7 points to 42%.

Of all the countries’ citizens surveyed in 2020, Australians placed the greatest concern on wildlife conservation. A quarter (25%) of Australians identify it as a top-three issue compared with an average of 15% globally.

It is likely this concern has been shaped by the loss of Australian wildlife during the bushfire crisis over summer. However, concern was also relatively high in 2018 compared with the rest of the world. In 2018, 22% of Australians selected this issue (14% globally).

Across a range of environmental behaviours, as many as two fifths globally feel they are already contributing as much as they possibly can by undertaking specific behaviours.

Australians feel they are already doing much to limit their impact on climate change including recycling (54% report they are already doing as much as they possibly can); saving energy at home (e.g. through insulation, 43% already doing as much as they possibly can); and saving water at home (40% already doing as much as they possibly can).

Australians are divided on whether the environment should have to endure some setbacks in order to help the economy to recover from the economic impacts of COVID-19.

Half (50%) agree that the Government should focus on helping the economy to recover first and foremost, even if that means taking some actions that are bad for the environment. Two-in-five (41%) disagree.

Ipsos Australia Public Affairs Director, Jennifer Brook, said: “It’s not surprising Australians feel conflicted about the potential of environmental sacrifices for economic recovery.

"In another of our monthly Ipsos Issues Monitor surveys, we have seen the environment get pushed out as the number one issue facing the nation at the start of 2020 to be replaced by healthcare, the economy and unemployment.

“These three issues have all experienced a dramatic surge in concern during the coronavirus pandemic. At the beginning of the year, it was the bushfire crisis that put the environment at the top of the list, but clearly COVID-19 is driving concern about these other issues at the moment.

“Despite the environment taking a back seat compared with other current issues, it’s still important to people. There is strong support among the public for a green economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.

"The importance of staying at home as much as possible is having major impacts on our consumption and travel patterns at present. What remains to be seen is how sticky these behaviour changes are as the economy opens up again in post-pandemic life.”

Technical notes

The findings come from two surveys conducted by Ipsos on the Global Advisor online platform.
One is a 14-country survey conducted April 16-19, 2020 among 28,029 adults aged 18-74 in Canada and the United States and 16-74 in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia and Spain. The sample consisted of approximately 2,000+ individuals in each of the 14 countries.
The other is a 29-country survey conducted February 21 - March 6, 2020 among 20,590 adults aged 18-74 in the United States, Canada, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Turkey and aged 16-74 in 23 other markets.
The sample for this survey included approximately 1000+ individuals in each of Australia, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland), France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, and the U.S.; and approximately 500+ individuals in each of Argentina, Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Hungary, India, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey.
The precision of Ipsos online polls are calculated using a credibility interval with a poll of 1,000 accurate to +/- 3.1 percentage points and of 500 accurate to +/- 4.5 percentage points. For more information on the Ipsos use of credibility intervals, please visit the Ipsos website.
17 of the 29 countries surveyed online generate nationally representative samples in their countries (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and United States).
Brazil, China, Chile, Colombia, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey produce a national sample that is more urban & educated, and with higher incomes than their fellow citizens.
We refer to these respondents as “Upper Deck Consumer Citizens”. They are not nationally representative of their country.
Weighting was employed in both surveys to balance demographics and ensure that the sample's composition reflects that of the adult population according to the most recent country Census data, and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe.

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