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The Conversation - Hannah Feldman

School students take part in the global #ClimateStrike rally in Melbourne, Friday, March 16, 2019. AAP Image/Ellen Smith Young Australians have hit the streets for the second Climate Strike of 2019.
Youths are often brushed off as being politically disengaged, but the Australian Electoral Commission has reported record high numbers of youth enrolment, and climate change will be at the forefront of their minds when many take to the polls for the first time.
But unlike older generations, who develop and stick to lifelong party allegiances, we’re seeing dramatic shifts in the way young people vote, choosing sides based on issues and specific policies instead.
Slowly, we’re beginning see governments respond to climate change protests. Yesterday the UK Parliament declared a climate emergency, one of the demands from the Extinction Rebellion group who marched for ten days across London.
IMAGE Article linkBut there’s still much more to do. And the youth Climate Strike movement shows us loud and clear that young people not only care about climate change, but that it needs to be brought to the table to cement their vote.

Changing of the guard on party politics
The classification of “political engagement” around the world has traditionally had a strong citizenry focus: campaigning for a political party, joining unions, writing letters to MPs, and many other activities that would seem positively archaic to youth today.
Students at Brisbane’s Climate Strike in March, 2019. AAP Image/Dan PeledGeneration Z doesn’t need a town hall meeting or front bar at the Union Pub to get up to date information on their communities. Online communities mean they can find their tribe and pinpoint the political issues they care about, like climate change.
As a result, they’re more likely to focus their political attention on specific causes. For those voting for the first time on May 18, being politically active can mean product boycotts or endorsements, signing petitions and, as with Climate Strike, protest movements.
While protests are an ancient tradition, Climate Strike is being led entirely by school students. Greta Thunberg, now aged 16, began the School Strike for Climate movement after attracting press to a then solitary protest at Swedish parliament in 2018.
By March 15, 2019, the movement had grown to over 1.4 million students in more than 300 cities worldwide.


Greta Thunberg
This movement forces adults to acknowledge climate change is not only impacting the futures of an unknown, unborn generation, but also of those protesting here and now.
Climate change, then, is not only an important issue for under 24-year-olds, but also a deeply personal one. Discussion of climate change often elicits intense emotions like fear and anxiety for their futures.
In a speech earlier this year in Davos, Switzerland, Thunberg said:
adults keep saying: ‘We owe it to the young people to give them hope.’ But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.But despite their concern and focus on climate change as a political issue, very few young people have felt they could influence anything on a large scale. With Climate Strike, this may be changing.

Today’s issues, tomorrow’s voters
Young Australians have felt helpless and frustrated when it comes to curtailing climate change for several decades. This has flow-on effects that see youth hesitant to take action, especially considering no one likes to get involved in political issues they don’t feel like they can affect.
Climate change is the future for young Australians, and they won’t wait until they’re older to take action. Dean Lewins/AAPWhat’s more, Millennials and Generation Z are often labelled “lazy” or “entitled” free loaders in public discourse. This leads to a further retreat from political issues, and young people living up to the low expectation already set for them. It’s a cruel cycle.
But in 2017, young people were presented with a perfect opportunity to effect change in on a single issue: the same-sex marriage postal survey.
During this time, 100,000 Australians registered to vote for the first time, with 65% under the age of 24. These newly enrolled voters will also be stepping up to their first federal election in 2019, and they’re now feeling empowered to bring climate change to the table.
High profile protest movements such as Climate Strike don’t just help to make changes in the political arena. Participants are left feeling confident about the change they can make to a cause.
The result: we have a young generation more engaged with climate change policy than ever before.
After 150,000 young Australians attended Climate Strike in March 2019, one can’t help but to sit up and take notice of this vocal group of people.
As with any demographic, there will be those who continue to vote impulsively, without much consideration for their choice. But there will also be a considerable portion that vote on the issues that matter to them.
All told, climate change needs to be addressed in a real and meaningful way to win over these new voters. Those who can’t vote this election will soon be charging at the next.

Links

• School climate strikes: why adults no longer have the right to object to their children taking radical action
• Students striking for climate action are showing the exact skills employers look for
• Greta Thunberg at Davos: why Gen Z has real power to influence business on climate change
• Marriage survey: two-thirds of new voters are aged 18-24

Washington Post - Rick Noack | A. Odysseus Patrick

Young activists and others rally in Eugene, Ore., to support a high-profile climate change lawsuit brought by 21 young people against the federal government. (Andy Nelson/Associated Press) FOROS DE VALE FIGUEIRA, Portugal — Alfredo Sendim was just 8 years old when his family was forced off its 1,100-acre farm in central Portugal amid a wave of nationalizations in the 1970s.
The hard-left policies introduced during Portugal’s tumultuous path to democracy were later reversed, and the Sendim family has since returned to its land an hour’s drive from Lisbon. But in recent years, the now 52-year-old Sendim has grown increasingly worried he might have to leave again, perhaps for good.
This time, it is not a government’s action he fears, but inaction — over climate change.
Last May, Sendim and other plaintiffs from eight countries filed suit against European Union institutions, arguing that the bloc’s emissions cuts were inadequate and had exposed them to the ill effects of climate change. Evidence cited in the case includes devastating fires, record droughts and recurrent flooding.
It is still unclear how far the lawsuit will proceed, but the likelihood of success has never been higher, according to experts and activists. “Legal obstacles once considered insurmountable by many are now coming down one after the other,” said Christoph Bals, policy director with Germanwatch, one of several nongovernmental organizations supporting Sendim’s lawsuit.
Until recently, action on climate change was widely seen as a political issue. But according to Mark Clarke, a partner with the international law firm White & Case, Sendim’s case is part of “a global trend” — a development that adds a legal dimension.
More than 1,300 lawsuits related to climate change, many targeting governments or corporations, have been filed around the world since the 1980s, with a surge in recent years, according to research by Columbia University’s law school and the Arnold & Porter law firm. While judicial systems differ, the various rulings suggest the potential for climate-change litigation to expand and evolve across borders.
If the trend continues, Clarke said, “the volume of such cases alone may drive governments and corporations to take action.”
Alfredo Sendim, 52, who operates Herdade do Freixo do Meio, a farm in central Portugal, and plaintiffs from eight other countries filed suit against the European Union over climate change. (Rick Noack/The Washington Post) Most cases citing climate change have been brought in the United States. But courts elsewhere have shown more willingness in recent years to take on the kind of broad lawsuits that would force defendants to adjust emissions targets rather than merely pay compensation.
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court indicated its opposition to such challenges when it declined to hear a lawsuit brought by Alaskans against several major U.S. energy firms over climate change attributable to emissions. The justices said it was a political rather than a legal matter.
While courts in Europe have similarly rejected such claims in the past, that changed in 2015 when a Dutch court ruled that the government had breached the European Convention on Human Rights by reducing its emissions requirements more slowly than scientists have deemed necessary. An appeals court upheld the decision last year.
The ripple effects quickly reached as far as the United States.
One suit filed in 2015, Juliana v. United States, is still on track, albeit bumpily, after a judge in Oregon ordered the case to trial in a potentially landmark ruling a year later. The 21 young plaintiffs argue that they have a constitutional right to a clean environment.
The Supreme Court might yet doom their case, but that would not necessarily end large-scale ­climate-change litigation in the United States. Activists have also turned to state courts, particularly in California, with its tough public-nuisance law. So far, judges have differed on whether state courts are appropriate venues for lawsuits with global implications.
Some recent U.S. lawsuits have also focused on planned projects rather than past liability, paralleling similar efforts in Australia, where in February a judge blocked a proposed midsize coal mine in the state of New South Wales on the grounds that it would contribute to global warming — a legal first in the world’s largest coal exporter.
The young plaintiffs in the Juliana v. United States suit. (Andy Nelson/AP) In a ruling that was front-page news in Australia, the chief judge of the state’s planning court, ­Brian Preston, agreed with the residents of Gloucester, a town about 150 miles north of Sydney, that the Rocky Hill mine’s potential harm to the climate and the environment outweighed its likely economic benefit.
“What is now urgently needed, in order to meet generally agreed climate targets, is a rapid and deep decrease in greenhouse gas emissions,” Preston wrote.
Legal experts predicted that the ruling would produce copycat cases across the country.
“I think this does send a signal that the legal system is an appropriate place to challenge the ongoing development of fossil fuels,” Will Steffen, a climate scientist who provided pivotal evidence in the case, said in an interview.
While foreign rulings are generally not accepted as precedent by U.S. courts, the parallel rulings in Australia and other countries could still set standards for how to measure a country’s contribution to global warming — a consensus that may then also be followed by U.S. judges.
In 2011, at a legal conference in Hong Kong, Preston became one of the first jurists to advocate using lawsuits to generate political pressure on governments to curtail industries contributing to global warming.
The following year, former Irish president Mary Robinson urged an international meeting of lawyers in Dublin to lead a global effort that would become known as the climate-change justice movement.
Preston was among 19 experts who responded. Their 2014 report, “Achieving Justice and Human Rights in an Era of Climate Disruption,” was a detailed plan for using legal systems to combat global warming.
One key suggestion was to ­extend well-established human rights laws to cover the harm to individuals from the effects of a hotter climate, including damage to crops, spreading deserts and rising sea levels.
Acknowledging the difficulty of connecting harm done to any individual to a greenhouse gas emitter, the report proposed a wave of new laws around the world giving people the right to sue governments and companies simply for contributing to climate change. It also recommended the creation of a global judicial body, the International Court on the Environment, to enforce climate treaties.
So far, those bold proposals have not become reality.
Standing on a Portuguese hilltop overlooking his tree-covered farmland, which he runs as a cooperative with the help of local families, Alfredo Sendim agreed that global action — along with cross-border legal proceedings — is needed. “We have only one nation. It’s our planet,” he said.
Sendim hopes his suit will force the European Union to abide by its emissions targets. (Rick Noack/The Washington Post) Every year, Sendim said, wildfires have become more frequent in his part of Portugal. In one week last summer, thousands of his grapevines suffered irreversible heat damage amid temperatures never before measured at Herdade do Freixo do Meio, his farm.
He says he has done everything he could to prepare for a drier, hotter future, training his workers to fight fires and adopting water-saving farming methods.
Meanwhile, E.U. member states continue to fall short of their own emissions targets. It is time, he said, for them to do “what they told us they were going to do.”

Links

• Europe’s courts are holding governments to account for climate change
• Climate Change - The Gathering Legal And Policy Storm In Australia And Its Impact On The Energy And Resources Sector
• Climate Change Could Destroy His Home In Peru. So He Sued An Energy Company In Germany.
• Legal Protections Urged As Science Gears Up To Aid Great Barrier Reef
• Environmental Groups To Sue Shell Over Climate Change
• Climate Change: Top Lawyer Says Councils May Soon Be Liable For Climate Damage
• Environmental Groups Take France To Court Over Climate Change Inaction
• Trump’s Climate Policies Face 6 Big Legal Battles This Year

ABC News - Kristian Silva

Electric vehicles are estimated to make up at least 25 per cent of new car sales by 2030. (ABC News: Leah MacLennan)Electric vehicles have been one of the talking points of the 2019 federal election campaign, and both major parties have made commitments to boost sales.While the number of electric vehicles on Australian roads is extremely low, consumer sentiment is changing.
The Opposition has set a target of making up to half of new cars sold in Australia electric by 2030.
The Coalition has argued that is unrealistic, although Government agency estimates put new electric car sales in 2030 as sitting between 25 and 50 per cent of the market.
At the moment, you can expect to pay about $45,000 for the cheapest car on the market, with prices well over $100,000 for premium models.
Hundreds of voters have asked questions about electric cars via the ABC's You Ask, We Answer project.
Here are some answers.

What is the expected life of an electric car battery?
The "official answer" is at least eight years, according to the Electric Vehicle Council's Tim Washington.
"Most manufacturers warranty their battery packs for eight years unlimited warranty," Mr Washington said.
After that point, the batteries should be able to hold about 70 per cent of their original charge levels, he said.
Mr Washington expects battery swap schemes to be created in future.
"We just haven't hit a stage where that's readily a market that needs serving," he said.

How far can you travel on a single charge?
Electric cars and vehicle emissions standards have become a major election issue. (ABC News: Chris Gillett)Mr Washington said the range is between 250 kilometres and 650km for top-end models.
"It's pretty comfortable for your average weekly commute," he said.
"You could almost do that with just a charge a week."
Can electric cars go the distance?
The ABC test drives an electric car from Perth to Augusta to see if it can go the distance on Australia's vast regional roads without running out of juice.
There are several ways to charge a car.
Mr Washington said plugging the car into a regular power socket overnight would provide enough charge for a 100km journey.
A dedicated power station — a more popular option that costs about $2,000 to install at home — is capable of delivering 350- to 400kms'-worth of charge overnight.
That range is more than doubled with a three-phase charging station.
The cost of charging varies because of peak and off-peak power rates and the vehicles themselves.
Mr Washington believes it would cost between $360 and $750 to power a vehicle driven 15,000km per year.
Very cold conditions, such as those on snow-topped mountains during winter, can affect the amount of charge batteries can hold.

The number of public charging stations is expected to increase. (ABC News: Lexy Hamiton-Smith)Who pays at public charging stations?
In many cases, drivers do not need to pay to recharge their cars.
"It is the site host who pays for the electricity because they gain a benefit from you being there," Mr Washington said.
"So if you go to a shopping centre, for example, you stay there, you charge your car, it costs them almost nothing.
"But it means that you stay a bit longer."
In February, Infrastructure Australia proposed a national rollout of fast-charging sites as one of its most pressing investment priorities over the next 15 years.
Under the proposal, fast-charging sites would be established along the national highway network for use by truck companies and private drivers.

What about taxes?
A shift towards electric vehicles is going to impact fuel excise collected by the Federal Government, which rakes in about $18 billion a year.
About 41 cents from every litre of fuel goes to government coffers, and that money is used to build and maintain roads.
It isn't only cars — Australia Post has rolled out e-trikes on some of its routes. (ABC News: Meghna Bali)Some groups, including think-tank Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, believe a tax based on distance travelled is the way forward.
"Over the last decade or so, fuel excise has been in decline, but with new, more fuel-efficient vehicles — and particularly hybrid and electric vehicles — it's now in terminal decline," Infrastructure Partnerships Australia chief Adrian Dwyer said last year.
Mr Washington believes a road use tax is inevitable.
"I have faith that the government will find new ways to tax us," he said.Links

• Electric car sector crying out for fast-charging sites, industry body says
• Coalition says it's not anti-electric cars, but doesn't want to tell people what to drive
• Labor's cash splash to build electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles in Australia
• Electric cars are breaking our roads, here's how
• Electric Vehicles Are The Road To The Future
• Here’s Why Electric Cars Have Plenty Of Grunt, Oomph And Torque
• Electric Cars Can Clean Up The Mining Industry – Here’s How
• Poll Shows 50% Of Australians Support Shifting All Sales Of New Cars To Electric Vehicles By 2025
• Coalition Hits Bottom Of Barrel With Fake News Campaign Against Electric Cars
• Electric Vehicles An Opportunity For Local Government
• 'Ultra Rapid' Electric Car Charging Network Coming To Australia
• One Million Electric Cars By 2030? You're Dreaming Without Big Spending
• Not So Fast: Why The Electric Vehicle Revolution Will Bring Problems Of Its Own
• Electric Vehicles No 'Silver Bullet' For Climate Change: Environment Commissioner

ABC News - Josh Roberston

Adani's Carmichael coal mine highlights the political divide on climate change in Australia. (Twitter: Matthew Canavan)Adani's Carmichael coal mine looms as a federal election issue after the miner was granted a contentious eleventh-hour environmental approval by the Morrison Government in April. That takes Adani another step closer to a golden-shovel moment which is already four years overdue.
It's also put the spotlight on federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and whether Labor would overturn the decision if it wins power.
Here's what we know — and still don't know — about the project.

Why is the Adani mine still controversial?
It highlights the political divide on climate change in Australia.
Adani shelled out half-a-billion-dollars for the Carmichael Coal tenement in 2010.
It wants to export coal for electricity to Asia, including in the company's home market, India, where it's a power player.
It originally planned to have the mine up and running four years ago.
The project has become a touchstone for an environmental movement trying to stop new thermal coal mines.
This argument says there are enough carbon emissions from existing fossil fuel projects to blow the world's "carbon budget" to keep average temperature rises above 2 degrees Celsius.
The controversial mine has been be scaled back significantly from earlier plans. (ABC News)The Carmichael mine, they say, is the thin edge of the wedge.
Adani would blaze a trail for five other mining hopefuls in Queensland's Galilee Basin, which contains enough coal to outstrip Australia's annual carbon emissions if it was all burned.
Project supporters say local benefits — jobs and property booms from mining income — would otherwise go overseas.
Asia will get its coal from somewhere else, they say, so the argument is better it be regional Queensland where, in an economy still reeling from the end of the mining boom, Adani has become a symbol of hope.
And Adani has stared down numerous legal challenges in court, while striving for nine years to get the most-scrutinised coal project in modern Australian history over the line.
Traditional owners of the mine site are bitterly split on the project.
Other concerns include that the mine could potentially drain the nationally important Doongmabulla Springs dry, and deprive the black-throated finch out of habitat critical to its survival.

How big would the mine project be?
The controversial mine has been be scaled back significantly from earlier plans. (ABC News)Not half as big as Adani first hoped — but still one of the biggest coal mines in Australia.
Adani has walked back its vision of a 60-million-tonne-a-year mega-mine to a 10-to-15MT-a-year proposition, with the option of ramping up to 27 MT.
That puts it on par with the country's largest existing thermal coal operations, BHP Billiton's Mount Arthur Mine — 15MT — in NSW and BMA's Blackwater mine in Queensland — 13MT — but which also includes coal for steelmaking.
Adani has also swapped its plan for a 388km rail line linking the mine to its Abbot Point coal port, to a 200km one piggy-backing Aurizon's network.
It put the original project cost at $16.5 billion over its lifetime. It now says the mine component will cost $2 billion.

How many jobs?
Adani used to run advertisements promising the project would generate 10,000 jobs — direct and indirect, at its peak from 2024, according to one form of modelling — and $22 billion in taxes and royalties.
Its economics expert in court in 2015 instead said it would create an extra 1,464 jobs in Australia — 1,206 of them in Queensland — and generate $16.8 billion in taxes and royalties.
While the revised mine plan could be less than a quarter of its original scale, Adani has not publicly put forward a new projection for jobs or tax and royalty streams.
It is yet to reach a final deal with the State Government on how its royalty payments might be deferred in the mine's first five years.

Who is funding it?
Adani.
It says it can "self-fund" the smaller project, after previously seeking finance from Asian banks without success, amid lobbying by anti-mining activists.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk killed off its chances of a $1 billion taxpayer-funded loan for its railway in 2017.
The project has become a touchstone for an environmental movement trying to stop new thermal coal mines. (ABC News: Lara Webster)What is standing in Adani's way?
Adani has mining and environmental licences from the Queensland Government but it still needs the state to sign off on two environmental management plans — one for the black-throated finch and one for groundwater.
Adani managed to get federal approval for its groundwater plan on the eve of the Morrison Government hitting caretaker mode in the election campaign.
Federal Environment Minister Melissa Price reportedly came under pressure to sign off on the plan from Coalition MPs from Queensland.
But the Queensland Government will hold Adani to a different standard on groundwater.
Queensland Environment Minister Leanne Enoch has said Adani must "definitively" identify the source aquifers of the Doongmabulla Springs.
The Doongmabulla Springs complex is regarded as one of the world's last pristine desert oases. (Supplied: Tom Jefferson (Lock the Gate))Ms Enoch said according to her department, the advice to Ms Price from federal agencies the CSIRO and GeoScience Australia was that Adani had not.
Adani Mining Australia boss Lucas Dow reportedly said last year the approvals were a formality.
The company is now campaigning against what it calls the State Government "changing the goalposts" and dragging its feet on approvals.
The decisions on both plans will be in the hands of the state Environment Department.

What else?
Adani also needs the Queensland Government to extinguish the native title claims of the Wangan and Jagalingou (W&J) people to the mine site.
It can then take up a freehold lease and start digging.
But the Palaszczuk Government has indicated it won't be rushing to make that happen.
It will wait at least until Adani opponents within the W&J exhaust their legal avenue of appeal in the Federal Court.
Traditional owners of the mine site are bitterly split on the project. (ABC News: Patrick Williams)A hearing is set down for next month, and a decision on whether a crucial land-use agreement with the miner should stand is likely months away.
Adani supporters in the W&J maintain they have the numbers.
The anti-Adani contingent in the W&J, who describe themselves as the last line of resistance to the mine, have flagged taking their fight to the High Court.
It's not clear if the state would wait for that outcome. But most of the critical levers on the Adani project remain in the Palaszczuk Government's hands.
The Australian Conservation Foundation is also challenging Ms Price in the federal Court over her decision not to apply "water trigger" assessment over a water-pipeline project proposed by Adani.
It's one of at least a dozen legal challenges to Adani over the past eight years.

Would a Shorten government overturn approval of the project?
Maybe.
Federal Labor leader Bill Shorten has refused to rule out reviewing the groundwater approval but has "no plans".
He says Labor would, "adhere to the science, the law, we won't create sovereign risk".
Ms Enoch has claimed the approval "reeks of political interference" from Adani's supporters in the Coalition, which "may have compromised the integrity of the decision-making process".
Ms Price has noted the project must meet further conditions of approval from the Commonwealth before a golden-shovel moment.

Links

• Controversial uranium mine approved day before election called
• Handwritten notes appear to contradict Environment Minister over Adani approval
• Adani coal mine a step closer with Environment Minister endorsing groundwater approvals
• Adani ready to go at Carmichael mine but says final approvals holding it up
• Adani Did Not 'Accept In Full' Changes Sought By Scientists During Approval Stages, Meeting Notes Show
• Now Adani Has Been Approved, These Are The Nine At-Risk Coalition Seats Most Concerned About Climate Change
• Environment Minister Melissa Price Signs Off On Adani Project
• As The Climate Warms, Heat Is Building On Politicians To Respond
• 'Missed Opportunity': Australia's 'Difficult' Position In UN Climate Change Talks
• Pacific Nations Under Climate Threat Urge Australia To Abandon Coal Within 12 Years
• Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga Says Australia's Climate Change Inaction Undermines Its 'Pacific Pivot'
• Big Coal And Friends On Track To Shut Down Your Climate Activism
• It Should Not Be Up To Australia's Schoolchildren To Stop Adani
• Adani To Self-Fund $2b Carmichael Mine, Construction To Start Before Christmas

The Conversation - Annah Piggott-McKellar |  Karen Elizabeth McNamara | Patrick D. Nunn

Many houses were flattened after Tropical Cyclone Evan, leading to the partial relocation of the Fijian viillage Denimanu. Rowena Harbridge/AusAID, CC BY-SA The original Fijian village of Vunidogoloa is abandoned. Houses, now dilapidated, remain overgrown with vegetation. Remnants of an old seawall built to protect the village is a stark reminder of what climate change can do to a community’s home.
Vunidogoloa is one of four Fijian communities that have been forced to relocate from the effects of climate change. And more than 80 communities have been earmarked by the Fiji government for potential future relocation.
Low lying coastal communities like these are especially vulnerable to threats of sea-level rise, inundation of tides, increased intensity of storm surges and coastal erosion. Extreme, sudden weather events such as cyclones can also force communities to move, particularly in the tropics.
But relocating communities involves much more than simply rebuilding houses in a safer location.
It involves providing the right conditions for people to rebuild the lives they knew, such as equitable access to resources and services, social capital and community infrastructure.
Our research documents the experiences and outcomes of relocation for two of these Fijian communities – Vunidogoloa and Denimanu.

The relocated villages
My colleagues and I visited Vunidogoloa and Denimanu, villages in Fiji’s Northern Islands, at the end of 2017 and spoke to village leaders and community members to learn how they felt about the relocation process.
All 153 residents of Vunidogoloa and roughly half of the 170 people in Denimanu moved away from their climate ravaged homes.
Map of Fiji showing the two case study sites. Author providedFlooding in Vunidogoloa
Vunidogoloa is a classic example of the slow creep of climate change. For a number of decades the residents have fought coastal flooding, salt-water intrusion and shoreline erosion. The village leaders approached the Fijian government, asking to be relocated to safer ground.
The relocation was originally set for 2012 but, after delays, the entire village moved roughly 1.5 kilometres inland two years later. This is often recognised as the first ever village in Fiji to relocate from climate change.
The new village relocation site of Vunidogoloa.Cyclone in Denimanu
In contrast to Vunidogoloa, Denimanu experienced sudden onset effects of climate change.
While the village had been experiencing encroaching shorelines for years, it was Tropical Cyclone Evan, which hit in 2012 destroying 19 houses closest to the shoreline, that prompted relocation.
These homes were rebuilt roughly 500 metres from the original site on a hill slope. With the remaining houses still standing on the original site, the village was only partially moved.
The new village relocation site of Denimanu. Author providedWas relocation a success?
The relocation was a success in Vunidogoloa, and residents said they now feel much safer from climate change hazards. One villager told us:
We were so fearful because of the tides living at the old site. We were happy to move away from that fear. But in Denimanu, where the relocated villagers live on a slope, fears of coastal threats have now been replaced by a fear of potential landslides. This is especially concerning as the village’s primary school was recently destroyed by a nearby landslide.
A relocated Denimanu local said:
We were delighted with the move to the new houses, but we were still worried about the landslide because the houses were on the hill and we know this place.The landslide that destroyed the primary school in Denimanu village.Ultimately, residents in both villages were happy with many aspects of the relocation process.
For example, they were provided solar power, rainwater tanks, and household facilities that weren’t available in the original villages. Vunidogoloa also received pineapple plants, cattle, and fish ponds, which have helped reestablish their livelihoods.
But it’s not all good news. While new housing was built for the community, they were built to a poor standard, with leaking through the doors and walls, especially in periods of high rainfall. Fiji is located in the tropics, so these infrastructure problems are likely to get worse.
And moving the Vunidogoloa villagers away from the ocean might damage their livelihoods, as fishing is one of their dominant sources of food. The ocean also provides an important spiritual connection for local people.
The impacts of climate change are set to rise, especially if global action to halt greenhouse gas emissions stagnates. More vulnerable communities will need to move away from their current homes.
While relocating communities to safer, less exposed areas is one option to help people manage climate hazards, it’s not a viable solution for all those affected.
Our research shows relocation must be done in a manner that accounts for the rebuilding of local livelihoods, with sustainable adaptation solutions that put local priorities at the centre of this process.
And we need them before more coastal villages are impacted by both slow and sudden onset climate impacts, putting more people in danger.

Links

• For Pacific Island nations, rising sea levels are a bigger security concern than rising Chinese influence
• Sidelining God: why secular climate projects in the Pacific Islands are failing
• Don't give up on Pacific Island nations yet
• Pacific Shames PM On Climate Policy
• PM Morrison Says Australia Climate Target To Remain Unchanged, Despite Fiji's Criticism
• Climate Change Is 'No Laughing Matter', Fiji's PM Frank Bainimarama Tells Australia During Scott Morrison's Pacific Trip
• Pacific Nations Under Climate Threat Urge Australia To Abandon Coal Within 12 Years
• Australia Only Nation To Join US At Pro-Coal Event At COP24 Climate Talks
• Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga Says Australia's Climate Change Inaction Undermines Its 'Pacific Pivot'
• Vanuatu Says It May Sue Fossil Fuel Companies And Other Countries Over Climate Change
• Indigenous Poets Read Urgent Climate Message On A Melting Glacier
• Climate Change: Nauru’s Life On The Frontlines
• Global inequality is 25% higher than it would have been in a climate-stable world
• The value of trees: 4 essential reads

Fairfax - Nicole Hasham

Animals in Australia’s globally renowned wet tropics are on the brink of extinction after the hottest summer on record, according to official advice that equates the scale of the crisis to coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef.
The extraordinary warning relates to the lush green coastal fringe spanning Townsville, Cairns and Cooktown in Queensland’s north – the Earth’s oldest rainforest and a World Heritage-listed tourist drawcard.
A statement from the board of the Wet Tropics Management Authority on Tuesday said more than half of animal species endemic to the area may be extinct within decades. It called for strong global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the ancient area for future generations.
A government body warns that climate change threatens to force animals in the Wet Tropics to extinction.

The climate change policies of the major parties are under the microscope during the federal election campaign, as Labor and the Coalition pledge starkly different action to address the crisis.
The Queensland government authority says "concerning new evidence has shown an accelerating decline" in the wet tropics' unique rainforest animals.
The authority says the lemuroid ringtail possum is one of the worst affected species. Credit: Wet Tropics Management Authority.
"Following the hottest summer ever recorded, some of the key species for which the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area was listed are at imminent risk of extinction,” the statement said.
The Wet Tropics bring $5.2 billion worth of economic benefits each year. It runs parallel to the Great Barrier Reef, and includes the Daintree and Barron Gorge national parks and 13 river systems.
A 2016 report found that region’s biodiversity was already declining, largely due to warming global temperatures. Species such as the lemuroid ringtail possum, green ringtail possum and tooth-billed bowerbird were progressively moving to cooler, higher ground "leaving alarming population declines" in lower areas.
Modelling has previously predicted that more than half of the area’s endemic species may be extinct by the end of this century. However the latest findings by James Cook University biodiversity professor Steve Williams suggested “these extinctions are happening even sooner”, the statement said.
Some mountain-adapted species, such as the lemuroid ringtail possum, could not survive even a day of temperatures above 29 degrees. However Mount Bartle Frere, the highest mountain in the Wet Tropics, recorded "an unprecedented 39 degrees" on six days this past summer, the board said.
"If the trends continue, populations at sites that previously had the highest density of lemuroid ringtail possums in the region could become locally extinct as early as 2022. This species is currently not even classified as endangered," it said.
The wet tropics were inscribed on the World Heritage register in 1988, and are a tourist drawcard.
The statement said extreme heat events were as devastating to the wet tropics as coral bleaching was to the Great Barrier Reef. But unlike the Reef, funding to address the effects of climate change in land-based World Heritage Areas "has not been commensurate with the urgency" of mitigation.
The board said "strong intervention is required immediately" to secure the future of the area, including urgent action on reducing global emissions. Other measures to increase the area’s resilience were also required, such as land restoration, monitoring and pest management.
The authority says the International Union on the Conservation of Nature has ranked the Wet Tropics as the second most irreplaceable World Heritage Area on Earth, largely because many of its animal species are found nowhere else.
Australian Conservation Foundation chief executive Kelly O’Shanassy said the authority's call showed that climate change is hurting Australia and a responsible government would act accordingly.
"Our political leaders must explain how they will protect places like the Wet Tropics of Queensland by urgently cutting our climate pollution and showing global leadership to encourage other countries to do likewise," she said.
"Ultimately we are witnessing the destruction by climate change of one of the most ecologically important and beautiful places in the world that we as Australians have promised to look after on behalf of all humankind."
Voter concern over climate change is at record highs during the election campaign. The Morrison government has pledged to cut Australia's emissions by 26 per cent by 2030, based on 2005 levels. This is in line with the Paris target but experts say it is not consistent with keeping global warming below the critical 1.5 degree threshold.
Labor would reduce emissions by 45 per cent over the same period. Scientists and environmentalists have welcomed the policy, but say more must be done to avert the worst climate change impacts.

Links

• 'Our Little Brown Rat': First Climate Change-Caused Mammal Extinction
• The Biggest Issues For Wildlife And Endangered Species In 2019
• Worst Mass Extinction Event In Earth’s History Was Caused By Global Warming Analogous To Current Climate Crisis
• Climate Change Also Wiped Out Life On Earth 252 Million Years Ago
• Extinction Toll May Be Far Worse Than Thought
• The 'Great Dying': Rapid Warming Caused Largest Extinction Event Ever, Report Says
• More Than 75 Percent Of Earth’s Land Areas Are ‘Broken,’ Major Report Finds
• Life On Earth Is Under Assault—But There’s Still Hope
• Burning Coal May Have Caused Earth’s Worst Mass Extinction
• The Terrifying Phenomenon That Is Pushing Species Towards Extinction
• 'A National Disgrace': Australia's Extinction Crisis Is Unfolding In Plain Sight

SBS News - Claudia Farhart

The Climate Council says the federal government has slashed climate research funding, censored reports showing the extent of the damage and released emissions data around Christmas when the public is distracted.
Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie says the federal government has been dishonest with the public about climate change. AAPThe Australian Government has been accused of going to "extraordinary lengths" to hide the full extent of climate change from the public, according to a new report.
The Climate Council's Climate Cuts, Cover-Ups and Censorship report found the government had slashed climate science funding, rejected advice from climate bodies, and weakened the nation's climate science capability by cutting jobs at the CSIRO.


Australia Street: How important is climate change policy to you?

Climate Council Report Key Findings

• The Government’s tenure has been characterised by slashing climate science funding, cutting effective climate change programs, rejecting advice from expert domestic and international bodies, misleading claims from Federal Ministers, a lack of any effective climate programs, and consistently covering up poor performance.
• Deep funding cuts and job losses at the CSIRO have weakened Australia’s climate science capability. As a result, Australia is unprepared to cope with the impacts of climate change.
• The government’s lack of climate change action is the defining leadership failure of the past decade. We have not tackled climate change, the consequences are with us, and we must work very quickly to prevent catastrophic consequences.
• Australia’s next government must adopt credible climate policy and a transparent and accurate approach to reporting and tracking Australia’s climate performance to ensure the public can appropriately evaluate its performance.

Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie said the report's findings were shocking.
"I think most Australians would be outraged if they knew the full story," Ms McKenzie said.
"The Coalition Government has slashed climate science funding, censored important information and repeatedly made false claims."
The report was released the day after the first leader's debate between Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten ahead of the 18 May federal election.
Environmental policy has been a defining issue of the campaign to date, with coal-mining protests and debates over water buy-backs occupying much of the discussion.
The Climate Council's head of research Dr Martin Rice said the government had also been known to deliberately release climate information at the busiest times of the year and block other information from being released altogether.
“The Federal Government has repeatedly tried to avoid scrutiny by releasing greenhouse gas emissions data just before Christmas or on the eve of football grand finals when fewer people are paying attention,” Dr Rice said.
"The Federal Government censored a UNESCO report on climate change and World Heritage sites, convincing the UN agency to delete all references to Australia and the Great Barrier Reef."
While the debate around climate policy continues, the Climate Council's Professor Will Steffen said the test of good climate policy was simple.
"It must be aligned with the science, it must be clear and effective, and it must deliver greenhouse gas emission reductions consistent with the Paris targets," Professor Steffen said.
"Our current policy fails on all three counts."

United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF): Australian youth and climate change.

Australia recently experienced what the Climate Council called its 'Angriest Summer' in history.
Ms McKenzie said the effects of climate change were clear in the nation's increasingly extreme weather conditions.
“Heatwaves have become hotter and last longer, while droughts, intense rainfall and bushfire conditions have become more severe,” Ms McKenzie said.
“As Australians experience escalating consequences into the future, they are likely to view this period of missed opportunities and failed leadership with deep dismay."
Bill Shorten and Scott Morrison will have a leaders' debate in Perth on Monday night. AAP
Links

• Report: Climate Council - Climate Cuts, Cover-Ups and Censorship (pdf)
• Why the controversial Adani mine could be a make-or-break election issue
• Government Ignored Scientists’ Advice on Adani
• Australians Say Electric Cars Are the Future – New Pol
• Emergency Chiefs: Australia unprepared for worsening extremes
• Renewables Business is Boomin’
• Finally, A Climate Policy
• Australia’s Angriest Summer – New Report
• Top Energy Experts Counter Government Misinformation
• Australia's 'angriest summer': 200 records broken and fruit cooking on trees

USA Today - Elizabeth Weise


President Trump’s pick for leading a climate change panel is notorious for denying the science behind human-caused global warming. We dive into the counter-arguments on climate change. USA TODAY

President Trump’s pick for leading a climate change panel is notorious for denying the science behind human-caused global warming. We dive into the counter-arguments on climate change.
What will life be like after we've solved climate change? Better than today or worse? Mud huts and gruel, or flying cars and the Jetsons?
Comfy homes, good food, whip-smart appliances and robots hopping around on farms all seem pretty likely, experts queried by USA TODAY said. All in all, our living standard will be the same, only a lot greener and more efficient.
That view is in stark contrast to a common complaint by critics who object to making global warming-based changes to the economy, suggesting such changes would destroy America’s standard of living and force everyone to “live in yurts and eat tofu,” as one commenter put it.

EARTH DAY
80 beautiful photos from around the world for Earth Day
The group of monuments at Hampi in India consist of ruins of several beautiful Dravidian temples and palaces - the last remnants of the Vijayanagar kingdom.
“Every single proposed solution will simultaneously improve life and decrease carbon emissions,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, a professor of climate science at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who has provided testimony and scientific expertise on climate change to the White House, the governor of California and U.S. congressional offices.
These predictions presume the shift to carbon-neutral energy, industrial and transportation systems happens in time to slow and eventually reverse the effects of global warming the planet is already beginning to experience: rising oceans, more flooding, worse storms and increase heat waves and droughts.
That means that whatever happens next, experts say, depends entirely on how quickly we act. Many of these technological and policy changes are already underway, but need to be sped up. Today, humans pour 37 gigatons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere annually. People must shift away from those carbon emissions within the next 20 years to avoid "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society," according to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
For Earth Day, let’s presume we've successfully made that shift to a carbon-neutral world and you, your children or your grandchildren are waking up on a crisp fall morning sometime between 2050 and 2100. What’s the day like?
An image of "The Jetsons," the futuristic classic cartoon. (Photo: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Television Distribution)When do you need those dishes?
Houses won’t look all that different, though homes will almost certainly have solar power included if it's appropriate for the area. This will be especially important in hot and sunny parts of the country, to decrease the pressure on power production for cooling during the day. California already has a law requiring that all new homes built after 2020 include solar panels.
Homes will still have heat and cooling, electric lights, lots of electronics and big windows. But the systems and appliances will be much more efficient and much smarter.
This shift is already happening — today's refrigerators are about 20% larger but use one-quarter the electricity compared to those sold 20 years ago. The LED lightbulbs you buy at the grocery store use 20% of the energy the incandescent bulbs of a decade ago did, said Jay Apt,  a physicist and professor who directs the Electricity Industry Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
When occupants get out of bed, the house will likely be a comfortable temperature. Properties will probably still have a furnace or an electric heat pump. But they won’t be used as much because homes will be much better insulated, with windows that keep heat and cold in and out.
The systems used to heat buildings will likely look different than the ones we know today. One example already being used in some U.S. buildings involves pre-heating or chilling water when power is cheap, and then using it during the day when power is more expensive.
A vision of what the German city of Berlin might look like as carbon neutral. (Photo: Courtesy: The Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance.)“It’s like radiators. In the ceiling of each floor you have a cold-water air heat exchanger, the cold water sits in a series of pipes, the air blows across it and becomes quite cold and it blows in to cool the room,” said Apt.
After getting out of bed, the next step might be to check the dishwasher to get out a cup for coffee. The dishwasher, along with most appliances, will likely be tied to a smart system in your house that knows the power cost at different times of the day. If the local power company gets significant power from wind turbines, the cheapest power may be at night. If it’s from solar, it might be cheapest during the day.
“Your dishwasher may very well communicate with the electric power grid and say ‘OK, Mr. Smith has decided that he only wants to run his dishwasher only when the price of power is less than 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, so your dishwasher may decide to run at 2:00 in the morning,” says Apt.
Or you might set an override to tell the appliance that whatever the price, the dishes have to be done by 6 p.m., in time for dinner.
Another infrastructure change will likely be the more common use of geothermal heat pumps. These take advantage of the fact that the ground beneath our feet tends to stay about 50 degrees Fahrenheit in summer or winter.
That means if you run pipes down 6 to 8 feet below a house or apartment building, you can cool or heat a liquid in those pipes to around 50 degrees. That liquid can then be piped up to the building and used to bring the temperature inside to 50 degrees.
If it's a cold winter day and it's 20 degrees outside, the house is already up to 50 degrees and you only need to heat it another 15 degrees to be comfortable. If it's a hot summer day of 90 degrees, you cool the temperature down with no energy needed, said Apt.

Here a turbine, there a turbine
Coal, oil and many natural gas-fired power plants will have long ago closed. Instead, the nation will likely be powered by a mix of nuclear, wind, solar, hydroelectric and some natural gas.
The power grid will have been rebuilt to accommodate more periodic power inputs, with the positive effect of also allowing it to be protected against physical and cyber attacks.
Driving across America, the sight of large solar arrays or wind turbines will be common, much as seeing oil rigs is an everyday sight in much of the United States now. You might also run across tall arrays that pull carbon dioxide out of the air and turn it into fuel and the raw material for industrial uses.
Charging of the electric car. Businessman's hand holding the electric cable to the car. Car features have been changed. (Photo: Getty Images)Fun cars, fast charging
The car of the future will be electric. That’s because electricity is easy to generate from carbon-neutral sources such as wind, solar and nuclear. It’s a shift that’s already underway. In Norway, 58% of all cars sold in March were electric, according to Norway’s Road Traffic Information Council.
That’s a far cry from the fewer than 1% of cars in the United States that are electric today, but most experts presume the shift will happen relatively quickly. It also won’t be wrenching, said Chris Field, director of Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment.
“The electric car I have right now is the best car I’ve ever had. It’s a Chevy Bolt. It’s very practical, well thought out and fun to drive. It’s a really great car,” he said.
Those future cars will have a range between charges that will likely be much more than today’s 225 miles. Many estimates put it at 400 miles by 2028. There will likely be fast charging outlets nationwide, just as there are gas stations today. Already, new homes in Atlanta must be built to accommodate electric vehicles.
Cities of the future will likely have mostly apartment buildings and townhouses that are walkable and with bike paths built in. (Photo: Tourism Calgary)Walk to the gym
More and more people will live in cities, which produce dramatically fewer greenhouse gasses per person than suburbs. But the cities will be designed with the kind of human-friendly density that already is being incorporated into city planning across the globe.
They’ll have mostly apartment buildings and townhouses that are walkable and with bike paths built in. Excellent mass transit will be available on electric buses and vans. Businesses and office buildings will be interspersed rather than plunked down miles out of town in office parks and malls.
That shift away from far-flung suburbs is already apparent in today’s generation. “Young people want to be able to walk to the grocery store and the office and the gym,” said Fields.
Others will choose space to spread out or cheaper land and housing, preferences made more sustainable due to the increasing ability to work from home or commute by electric vehicles.
People walk by the co-working space WeWork in the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn on March 26, 2019 in New York City. WeWork, which lets freelancers and other non-traditional workers to become members in a shared or flexible office space, has expanded globally over the last year. (Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty Images)Telecommuting for fun and profit
Work will be more integrated with living areas. But wherever it is, the office will have been built to very high standards to reduce waste, save water and conserve energy. Already more than 33,000 buildings in the United States have gotten LEED certification, marking them as highly efficient.
Not that everyone will still go to an office every day. Telecommuting all or part of the time will become more common as the tools for doing so — fast Internet and good video connections — become cheaper, better and easier to use. More people will also work from communal workspaces near where they live.
Big U.S. companies are already beginning to do this. Amazon, Apple and Google have dozens of offices across the nation where people can work, so they don’t all need to move to Silicon Valley in California or to Seattle. Many young people are already used to working from shared office spaces such as WeWork and ImpactHub.
High-speed train model at the Capitol in Sacramento, California, in 2015. (Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)NYC to Chicago in 5 hours
For travel within the United States, a network of high-speed electric trains will likely crisscross the country, making rapid travel easily accessible. San Francisco and Los Angeles are three hours apart by rail, Chicago to New York five hours.
We’ll still fly places, but it will likely be more expensive than some of today’s rock-bottom prices. Jet fuel has to be very energy dense, so electric planes are out of the question. Instead, they’ll use fuel produced from carbon dioxide pulled out of the air or industrial waste gases, or from aviation biofuel made from organic waste from trash or leftover biomatter from agricultural fields.
Both are already being used. In 2018, Virgin Atlantic flew a Boeing 747 from Orlando to London using fuel made in part from captured greenhouse gas emissions.

A Virgin Atlantic VS16 flight preparing for take off at Orlando International Airport in Florida on October 2, 2018. (Photo: Doug Peters, PA Wire)Is that a robot in that field?
What’s old will be new again in many ways when it comes to food and farming, experts say. The nation's food supply is likely to be fresher and more wholesome as growers and sellers become better at managing logistics to minimize travel time and loss.
We’ll eat more seasonably than we do now because we’ll be paying more for energy and farmers will be thinking harder about water and energy usage.
“We’ve gotten into this mode that we expect to see blueberries and oranges every week of the year. As energy costs go higher and water becomes even in more short supply in the future, not every type of food will be available at every moment,” said Robert Myers, a professor of agriculture at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, and an expert on climate change and sustainable agriculture.
Not that kiwis won’t be available from New Zealand, or tomatoes in December, but they’ll be more expensive.
Amanda Little, author of the forthcoming book “The Fate of Food: What We’ll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World,” said mankind will likely be eating the same kinds of food we eat today, but it will be produced differently and much more efficiently.
That's especially true of meat, which she predicts will be either plant-based faux meat or tissue grown in vats that is identical to meat on a cellular level.
“It’s very inefficient to raise an entire animal just to eat the edible parts of it,” she said.
Meat from animals will still be available, what we’ll call “craft” or “specialty” meat, but a far bigger portion of the meat industry will come from either plant- or cell-based meats.
Little says cell-based meat is closer than we realize. She had some vat-grown duck just last week.
“It was chewy and greasy but it tasted very meaty. For a very early stage lab meat product, it was very convincing.
Robert Blair bought this multirotor hexacopter, an unmanned aircraft, to monitor his farm in Kendrick, Idaho. (Photo: Robert Blair via AP)Farms will likely look the same driving by, but a closer look will show differences. Older practices, like planting clover and other cover crops during the winter, will be more common to improve soil health, making it more able to withstand floods or drought and decrease the amount of fertilizer needed. Complex crop rotations, aided by computers, will make farming more efficient and cheaper because they will require less fertilizer and pesticides.
Those fields will likely also incorporate wind turbines or solar panels to give growers additional income. That’s already happening today. Many farms in the Midwest are getting rents of $3,000 to $5,000 per year to put turbines on their land, Apt says.
Fields also might have drones buzzing over them or small robots running down the rows, stopping to test the soil for moisture, nutrients and image the crops for weed or insect infestations. That information will be automatically fed to the farmer, who can use it to precisely water and care for each small land unit as required, rather than needlessly wasting expensive water and chemicals.
Ranchers and dairy farmers can use similar technology to move their cows and cattle from one paddock to another on an almost daily basis, mimicking what a buffalo herd would have done. Called intensive management grazing, it results in healthier land and better forage for the animals, ultimately bringing costs down.

Energy for everyone
The world’s air and water will be cleaner as we stop using polluting energy sources. The planet's resources will also become more equitable, as carbon-neutral energy sources become cheaper and more efficient, making them available to people in parts of the world where energy is currently expensive and difficult to obtain.
And it’s all doable, no breakthroughs required, said Stanford's Diffenbaugh. “The knowledge necessary for getting on that path is available,” he said.

Links

• 99.9999% chance humans are causing global warming, and other science-based facts on climate change for Earth Day
• The Next Reckoning: Capitalism And Climate Change
• Protests And Purchasing Power Could Be Positive Tipping Points In Climate Change
• Tip The Planet: Tackling Climate Change With Small, Sensitive Interventions
• Climate Change: Yes, Your Individual Action Does Make A Difference
• We Have The Tools To Beat Climate Change. Now We Need To Legislate
• Do You Pass These Climate Change Tests?
• Be The Change You Want To See In The World: How Individuals Can Help Save The Planet From Climate Catastrophe
• The Young Minds Solving Climate Change
• Harvard Scientists Want To Limit How Much Sunlight Reaches Earth's Surface In Order To Curb Global Warming
• How 34,500 Tonnes Of Food Waste Is Powering Melbourne Homes

The Guardian - Chris Barrett* | Anna Skarbek*

With our world-class solar and wind energy resource base, Australia stands to benefit from a successful – and rapid – low-carbon transition
Cars sit in flood waters outside in south-east Queensland. ‘How much financial risk are we exposed to from the effects of climate change, or from a delayed, bumpy transition to a low-carbon future?’ Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAPClimate policy has never been easy in Australia. But despite the debates of the past, Australians are pretty used to many of the policies that seek to regulate carbon emissions in our everyday lives. We know how to purchase green power for our homes; that our buildings are regulated for the energy they use; and that our household appliances come plastered with energy-efficiency star ratings.
But what about our bank accounts, our super, our insurance policies and investment funds? How does our money contribute to causing – or preventing – dangerous climate change? How much financial risk are we exposed to from the effects of climate change, or from a delayed, bumpy transition to a low-carbon future? What are policymakers and regulators doing about those risks? Climate Risk and the Finance System, a new report from the Monash Sustainable Development Institute, addresses these fundamental questions.
This second type of climate risk and opportunity – the massive implications of climate change for the financial system – is a fairly new frontier in climate policy. It has developed rapidly over the last three to four years internationally, and is now reaching Australia, where both the potential risks and opportunities raised by finance sector and regulatory reforms to address climate change are immense.
These reforms have their roots in the last financial crisis and a growing determination by international policymakers to avoid climate change being the cause of any future crisis. Two events pushed them to the top of the agenda: the landmark speech of highly respected Bank of England governor Mark Carney in September 2015 on the potentially grave risks to financial markets from climate change; and the Paris agreement in December of the same year, which firmly and for the first time placed a key responsibility upon the finance sector to shape the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Both raised the clear risk of trillions of dollars of high-emitting assets – including coalmines, power stations, oil rigs and gas plants – becoming “stranded” (ie devalued or worthless) assets in a world shifting rapidly out of high-carbon activities.
Australia is disproportionately exposed to such risks due to its highly carbon-intensive economy and its rebounding levels of emissions since 2013. Yet Australia also stands disproportionately to benefit from a successful low-carbon transition, with a world-class solar and wind energy resource base, mineral resources critical to battery production and a large and sophisticated funds management industry on hand to provide financial services to realise these opportunities.
This makes it all the more important for Australia to study the rapid progress made on the international sustainable finance policy agenda in recent years, and to draw on this experience for its own reform process.
For example, central bankers and financial supervisors have started to tackle the risks of climate change, establishing the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) in 2017. From an initial founding coalition of eight members, the network has grown within 18 months to number 35, including the Reserve Bank of Australia. Each has committed itself to “contribute to the development of environment and climate risk management in the financial sector, and to mobilise mainstream finance to support the transition toward a sustainable economy”. This is new terrain for traditionally conservative institutions, speaking to a growing urgency behind this agenda.
Further, Europe has embarked on a comprehensive sustainable finance policy reform agenda. Initiated in late 2016, and moving to policy design and implementation from early 2018, it includes important down payments in reforming sustainability benchmarks, disclosure regulations, investor duties and in defining a “taxonomy” of sustainable activities. These will have a large impact also beyond Europe’s shores, both since they apply to businesses operating in the vast European Union capital market, but also because of the best practice example they offer for others to copy.
The United Kingdom ran its own related policy reform process, reporting in March 2018. Government has yet to respond, but the process signals an interesting pro-green finance direction at odds with fears that the UK would turn in a deregulatory direction once freed from European frameworks. Both Canada and New Zealand have convened similar expert panels to push sustainable finance reform.
Intriguingly for Australia, our largest trading partner China has moved with speed on the same agenda, mandating liability insurance for environmental pollution and disclosures of environmental information. The potential size of China’s green finance sector gives these reforms an international resonance beyond their domestic impacts.
In conclusion, Australia has numerous positive reform examples to draw on. The recently announced Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative brings together finance sector leaders to develop a roadmap for the sector to address climate risk. Key industry players are aligned, domestic regulators have done solid groundwork, and there is a well-defined set of international best practices and international fora within which best practice can rapidly be transmitted. All the ingredients are there for Australia to catch up with the rest of the world, and quickly.

*Chris Barrett is executive director, finance strategy, at the European Climate Foundation and former Australian Ambassador to the OECD. 
*Anna Skarbek is CEO of ClimateWorks Australia.
They are the authors of Climate Risk and the Finance System.

Links

• Climate Risk and the Financial System - Chris Barrett & Anna Skarbek (pdf)
• The financial sector must be at the heart of tackling climate change - Mark Carney, François Villeroy de Galhau and Frank Elderson
• The RBA has sounded the climate change alarm. Time to sit up and take notice
• Heavyweights Now Speaking With One Voice On Climate Change Risks
• Why Climate Change Risks Are 'Material' For Big Finance
• APRA Demands Banks, Insurers Act On Climate Risk
• The RBA Has Sounded The Climate Change Alarm. Time To Sit Up And Take Notice
• 'Change Now Or Pay Later': RBA's Stark Warning On Climate Change
• Financial Giants Can Have A Pivotal Role For Climate Stability
• Australian Businesses Must Do More To Disclose Climate Change Risks To Investors, ASIC Says
• The Global Heatwave Is About To Hit Your Wallet
• 'Carbon Bubble' Could Spark Global Financial Crisis, Study Warns
• ASIC Warns On Climate Risk As Heat Turns On Directors
• Australian Firms Told To Catch Up On Climate Change Risk Checks
• Grave Climate Warning For Governments And Business: "This Is About Money"

Renew Economy - Giles Parkinson

Photo by Zbynek Burival on Unsplash Leading economist and climate change policy expert Professor Ross Garnaut says that Australia could be powered 100 per cent by “intermittent” renewables by the early 2030s, and have a grid that is both reliable and secure and cheaper than it is now.
In the third of a series of six public lectures being delivered by Garnaut in the lead up to the next election, Garnaut says a grid powered by wind and solar, and backed by storage and demand management, could be achieve quite quickly, but it would require the “train wreck” of regulatory failures to be fixed.
“I now have no doubt that intermittent renewables could meet 100 per cent of Australia’s electricity requirements by the 2030s, with high degrees of security and reliability, and at wholesale prices much lower than any experienced in Australia over the past decade,” Garnaut says in his talk last week at the University of Melbourne (a video of which can be seen here).
“More importantly, I now have no doubt that with well designed policy support, firm power in globally transformative quantities could be supplied to industrial locations in each State at globally competitive prices.
“That is around $45 to $50 per MWh today, whenever the power is required. No other developed country has a comparable opportunity.
 “That means that we can contribute our fair share to the global effort to contain temperature increases as close as possible to 1.5°C, even if it takes time to make strong headway in other sectors.”
Garnaut sees the electricity sector as the key to cutting emissions across the economy, and for securing Australia’s long-term economic future and as a global base for low-cost industry.
That’s because decarbonising the grid is the quickest and cheapest option, and in turn can lead to zero, or near zero emissions in transport, much of industry and fugitive emissions.
In turn, the decarbonisation of Australia’s electricity grid can play a big role in global decarbonisation efforts, because it could lead to exports of renewable energy in the form of hydrogen or ammonia to north Asia, and then other economies, and through sub sea cables to Indonesia and beyond.
“Australia’s renewable energy is a path to low cost emissions reduction in the rest of the world,” Garnaut says. “And before that, if wet our act together, we can going to find ourselves as the natural home of energy intensive industry.”



In a series of slides, Garnaut illustrates how this is possible. This slide above is probably the most stunning, because it compares the total cost of solar compared to just the operating costs of coal generation over the past 10 years, and looking forward to 2025.
Garnaut notes that solar was significantly more expensive than coal a decade ago, it is now cheaper than just the operating costs of coal.
Further falls in the cost of solar, to around $30/MWh by 2025, and further rises in the operating costs of coal, would mean it would make no sense to make new investments in coal generation from now on. Even with firming and storage, solar and wind beat fossil fuels, as the CSIRO and the Australian Energy market Operator have recognised.
This, he notes, has come as something of a surprise to most of the major global and national institutions, who have been consistently wrong in their estimations of technology costs.
These next two graphs illustrate how.



First is the cost of solar. International forecasts are the shaded blue and green in the middle. The forecasts from Australian institutions, including the Australian Energy Market Operator and even recent ones from the highly conservative Electric Power Research Institute, are ridiculously out of the ball-park.
The actual cost of solar – as reflected in recent power purchase agreements (PPAs) is revealed in yellow. It is far below even the most optimistic forecast. And it will continue to fall.



The same is true of wind energy (above), where the IEA and the global wind lobby were quite conservative in their forecasts, but in Australia the AEMO and EPRI were again out of the ballpark.
Garnaut worries that AEMO – despite its good work in putting together the Integrated System Plans over the last two years – may still be underestimating the cost falls in solar particularly.




He noted this graph which shows that AEMO’s forecasts have been significantly wrong over the last decade, and even with the major adjustments to the starting point every two years, it still downplays the possibility of future cost falls.
Garnaut says the evidence is clear – for each doubling in capacity, there has been a 24 per cent reduction in costs. This has been happening for the better part of four decades, and there is no reason to expect it would stop now,
“The story of the fall in solar PV prices is a triumph for climate policy,” Garnaut says, pointing to the policies in Germany and Europe at the start of the century that underpinned the growth in manufacturing and scale and the subsequent fall in costs.
Garnaut lamented the policy and political debate over renewable energy in the past decade, and the “train wreck of regulatory failure” that would need to be cleared to make room for the underlying economic forces.
This is particularly significant, because it is now widely recognised that it is not economics, or even engineering that is holding back the clean energy transition, but regulatory hurdles that are looming large as the major impediment.
This goes to the wholesale regulatory capture of regulator by the industry, although Garnaut did note the positive influence of AEMO CEO Audrey Zibelman and AER chief Paul Conboy.
“Whoever did those appointments should be recognised as Australian heroes,” he said, adding that regulatory agencies are starting to “do their job” and shifting from the old thinking around the synchronous energy system that had dominated perspectives.
Garnaut noted the state-wide blackout in South Australia, and lamented the fact that rather than being seen as a call to action on climate change, it was used – within hours – by Coalition politicians to argue against the use of renewables.
Thankfully, Garnaut said, it did lead to some forward thinking by then South Australia premier Jay Weatherill, who put in his plans that saw the construction of the highly successful Tesla big battery, and the back-up generators that have been used once, but very successfully since then.
“Since the summer of 2016-17, the Tesla big battery, other batteries, the Government’s gas turbines, and more attentive regulatory agencies have made South Australia possibly the most secure region within the National Energy Market,” Garnaut said.
 He noted that the one area that former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was able to move forward was in the promotion of the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme, probably because it “looked like technology that came from the 1950s”.
However, Garnaut said he was concerned about both the expense of the project, and the potential market power. He suggested taking the Snowy 2.0 scheme and putting it into a separate government owned entity that would provide “reliability services” at minimum cost.
Garnaut concluded his lecture by focusing on the opportunity of a zero carbon grid, powered by wind and solar.
“Australia emerged as a major player in global energy in the later decades of the fossil economy. Australia is by far the world’s biggest exporter of coal when you take thermal and metallurgical coal together. It is currently the second biggest exporter of gas, and is headed soon to be the biggest—at great cost to Australian consumers and industry.
“Australia became the world’s biggest exporter of aluminium in the late twentieth century after the Japanese industry, responding to environmental concerns at home, moved to importing metal, and Australia’s low coal costs made it the logical location for new production.
“Australia lost its old advantages in the fossil energy world economy in the twenty first century through developments discussed this evening.
“The rich natural endowment of potential for renewable energy means that when the whole world has low or zero emissions energy, Australia potentially has the lowest cost energy.
“If we secure the new opportunity, unlike the last, it will be sustainable.”

Links

• Jump In Renewable Energy Jobs As Solar Farms Overtake Hydro Power
• Renewable Energy Could Save $160 Trillion In Climate Change Costs by 2050
• 2018 Was Boom Year For Renewables Despite Political Chaos, Report Finds
• Four Corners Report Shows Climate Change Concerns Heating Up Ahead Of Federal Election
• How 34,500 Tonnes Of Food Waste Is Powering Melbourne Homes
• Australia Has Enough Solar, Wind Storage In Pipeline To Go 100% Renewables
• Snowy 2.0 Project Given Funds And Approval For Early Work Phase By Federal Government
• 100% Renewables Can Be Reached Quickly, But It Needs A Plan
• Australia Could Be 100% Renewables By 2032 At Current Rate Of Wind And Solar Installs
• Wind, Solar Eat Further Into Coal Supply On NEM, As Coalition Pushes For More Coal Supply On NEM

Fairfax - Caitlin Fitzsimmons*

When I was nine, the threat of nuclear war loomed large. I understood that Ronald Reagan was the president of the United States and Mikhail Gorbachev the leader of the Soviet Union. I knew about the nuclear arms race, specifically the Star Wars program and MX Missile, and the movement for nuclear disarmament.
I was a tad precocious but no prodigy, and I remember talking about the nuclear threat with other children.
When I was a child, the threat of nuclear war loomed large. Credit: ReutersSo I’m not remotely surprised that nine-year-olds today are writing about climate change and even the Paris agreement in their school work.
Of course, they are - climate change is an existential threat for Generation Z. Did you think they wouldn’t notice?
In a recent incident that made the news, the NSW Department of Education ordered Ramsgate Public School to remove two letters from students published in an online newsletter.
The children had written letters about climate change, notionally to Prime Minister Scott Morrison though the letters weren’t sent, as part of an exercise in persuasive writing.
A department spokesman told The Sun-Herald the letters were written after a geography lesson about the Great Barrier Reef. The spokesman said there was no problem with the lesson or the letters themselves but because they were addressed to the Prime Minister and were critical of government policy, the publication of the letters breached the Controversial Issues in Schools policy.
Young people are concerned about the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, which is threatened by warming water temperatures.The incident was reported in The Daily Telegraph, which quoted two right-wing think tanks and a conservative academic in a story about how teachers are ostensibly subjecting children to a political agenda in the classroom and “brainwashing young, immature and vulnerable children with their politically correct ideology”.
The same rhetoric was used to belittle the children and teenagers in the school student strike for climate - even the 17-year-olds who were nearly of voting age were dismissed as “pawns”.
Last week, Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg, the girl who started the worldwide school strike movement, addressed the British Parliament.
Predictably, people who don't want to hear her message choose to attack her instead - they mock her appearance and stern manner, her Asperger's, claim she is paid to protest, and dismiss her on the basis that she has only just turned 16.
If you would prefer to listen to an adult who has studied the issue then by all means do so - they will tell you the same as Thunberg. The difference is that Thunberg's youth gives her message about the future a certain moral clout.
Climate change is a tough issue for teachers and not just because they are hamstrung by policy.
A relative who teaches primary school recently confided in me about the emotional cost of teaching Gen Z, when he is increasingly pessimistic about their future given the devastation of our natural world.
Let’s not pretend that children and teenagers can’t understand what’s going on. Young people are young people and they are smarter than we give them credit for.
Don’t take my word for it. Here’s Professor Tonia Gray, a specialist in pedagogy and learning at the University of Western Sydney: “We underestimate the capabilities and the skills of the modern child. Don’t sell them short and don’t dumb it down.”
Associate Professor Penny Van Bergen, an education expert at Macquarie University, says a child aged nine is old enough to learn complex concepts such as climate change and even the principles of the Paris agreement.
UNICEF recently released its 2019 Young Ambassador Report based on consultations with 1517 Australian children and teenagers and an additional survey of 1007 young people aged 14 to 17. The report found young Australians are “extremely worried about what they see as the ongoing failures of governments, businesses and communities to act as effective stewards for a clean and livable environment”.
Students as young as Year 5 start to clearly express these opinions. Even preschoolers brought up the fact that litter could harm wildlife.
Among the surveyed teenagers, the vast majority (86 per cent) view climate change as a threat to their safety, with 73 per cent saying it affects the world “a lot” now and 84 per cent saying it will affect the world “a lot” in the future.
Three out of four want Australia to be taking action on climate change, to lead by example and play our part in stopping its worsening effects.
Only 8 per cent believe we shouldn’t take action because of negative effects on the economy and only 5 per cent that we are too small a nation to make a difference.
Only 4 per cent do not believe climate change is both real and caused by human activity.
Other environmental concerns such as plastic pollution, extinction of animals, deforestation and coral bleaching also rate highly. (If any readers want to argue about climate change, don’t bother - instead please focus your attention on any of the myriad of environmental problems you do acknowledge).
It suits adults to underestimate children because it means we don’t have to take them or their concerns seriously.
It’s a form of ad hominem argument, where you seek to discredit the person rather than engage with their substantive argument.
No one wins hearts and minds by demonising a child, so they’ll portray them as brainwashed innocents instead.
Young people and all future generations are the ones who will inherit a vastly depleted natural world. The only way to counter that moral authority is to call them “pawns” in a debate they couldn’t possibly understand.
Or we could hear the message and act.
As Thunberg says, we need to act like the house is on fire - because it is.
If we do anything less, the young will never forgive us.

*Caitlin Fitzsimmons is the associate editor of The Sun-Herald.

Links

• Save our minds by saving the world
• Teen activists back Steggall in 'logical next step' to climate strike
• Climate Change Spurs Shannon Loughnane's 700km Cross-Country Protest Hike
• The Young Minds Solving Climate Change
• The Rise Of Students Against Climate Change
• Students Worldwide Skip School To Demand Tough Action On Climate Change
• Climate Change Strikes Across Australia See Student Protesters Defy Calls To Stay In School
• Teenage Climate Activist Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize
• The Uncanny Power Of Greta Thunberg’s Climate-Change Rhetoric
• The Guardian View On Greta Thunberg: Seizing The Future
• Greta Thunberg Backs Climate General Strike To Force Leaders To Act
• Humanity Is At A Crossroads, Greta Thunberg Tells Extinction Rebellion
• Forget Brexit And Focus On Climate Change, Greta Thunberg Tells EU

Smithsonian.Com - Meilan Solly

Researchers point toward marine creatures’ inability to adapt to changing water temperatures, lack of adequate shelter
Kevin Lino NOAA/NMFS/PIFSC/ESD Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)Marine animals are twice as vulnerable to climate change-driven habitat loss as their land-dwelling counterparts, a new survey published in the journal Nature finds.
As Mark Kaufman reports for Mashable, the analysis—centered on around 400 cold-blooded species, including fish, mollusks, crustaceans and lizards—suggests marine creatures are ill-equipped to adapt to rising temperatures and, unlike land animals that can seek shelter in the shade or a burrow, largely unable to escape the heat.
“You don't have anywhere to go,” Natalya Gallo, a marine ecologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who was not involved in the study, tells Kaufman. “Maybe you can hide under a kelp leaf, but the entire water around you has warmed.”
Speaking with National Geographic’s Christina Nunez, lead author Malin Pinsky, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, further explains that ocean dwellers “live in an environment that, historically, hasn’t changed temperature all that much.”
Given that cold-blooded creatures rely on their surroundings to regulate body temperature, relatively stable marine ecosystems have actually made their inhabitants more susceptible to significant temperature changes. And while ocean temperatures are still much lower than those on land, as Anthony J. Richardson and David S. Schoeman point out in an accompanying Nature News and Views piece, marine heat waves, increased carbon dioxide pollution and other products of global warming are driving Earth’s oceans to higher temperatures than ever before.
To assess the threat posed by warming waters, Pinsky and her colleagues calculated “thermal safety margins” for 318 terrestrial and 88 marine animals. According to Motherboard’s Becky Ferreira, this measure represents the difference between a species’ upper heat tolerance and its body temperature at both full heat exposure and in “thermal refuge,” or cooled down sanctuaries ranging from shady forests to the depths of the ocean.
The team found that safety margins were slimmest for ocean dwellers living near the equator and land dwellers living near the midlatitudes. Crucially, Nunez writes, the data revealed that more than half of marine species at the higher end of their safety margins had disappeared from their historical habitats—a phenomenon known as local extinction—due to warming. Comparatively, around a quarter of land animals had abandoned their homes in favor of cooler environments.
On average, tropical marine creatures have a safety margin of 10 degrees Celsius. “That sounds like a lot,” Pinsky tells Nunez, “but the key is that populations actually go extinct long before they experience 10 degrees of warming.” In fact, Pinsky notes, just a degree or half-degree shift can dramatically impact such animals’ food-finding skills and reproduction abilities.
While some marine creatures can escape the heat by migrating to colder waters, others have fewer options: As Mashable’s Kaufman observes, surface-dwelling fish can’t simply move to the deep ocean and expect to thrive or even survive. The same is true of marine animals living in the shallow waters off of continental shelves, Bob Berwyn adds for InsideClimate News. And these species, as well as ones forced to flee their long-time habitats, are far from obscure ones likely to have no impact on humans’ livelihood; many, including halibut and winter founder, serve as key food sources for coastal communities.
“This affects our dinner plates in many cases,” Pinsky says to Kaufman.
Berwyn highlights several examples of animals reaching or surpassing their heat threshold. Coral reef-dwelling damselfish and cardinalfish, for example, have started to disappear from some areas, hampering the health of these already threatened ecosystems. Summer flounder, once native to the North Carolina coast, have moved to cooler waters, forcing fishermen to travel some 600 miles further north than before in order to catch them.
Although the new study emphasizes marine dwellers’ plight to an extent little-seen in academia, Alex Gunderson, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at New Orleans’ Tulane University, is quick to point out that terrestrial creatures remain at risk, too: As he tells National Geographic’s Nunez, “Land animals are at lower risk than marine animals only if they can find cool shaded spots to avoid direct sunlight and wait out extreme heat.”
Building on the researchers’ call to lower greenhouse gas emissions, stop overfishing and limit ocean habitat destruction, Gunderson concludes, “The results of this study are a further wake-up call that we need to protect forests and other natural environments because of the temperature buffer that they provide wildlife in a warming world.”

Links

• Sea animals are more vulnerable to warming than are land ones
• Global Warming Is Hitting Ocean Species Hardest, Including Fish Relied on for Food
• Climate change is way worse on ocean animals
• Sea Creatures Getting Wiped Out Twice as Fast by Global Warming
• Ocean Heat Waves Are Threatening Marine Life, Biodiversity
• Greater vulnerability to warming of marine versus terrestrial ectotherms
• Why sea creatures are fleeing their homes

The Conversation - Jake Whitehead | Michael Kane

Multiple forms of electric aircraft are being developed rapidly. MagniX, Author provided (No reuse) Move aside electric cars, another disruption set to occur in the next decade is being ignored in current Australian transport infrastructure debates: electric aviation. Electric aircraft technology is rapidly developing locally and overseas, with the aim of potentially reducing emissions and operating costs by over 75%. Other countries are already planning for 100% electric short-haul plane fleets within a couple of decades.
Australia relies heavily on air transport. The country has the most domestic airline seats per person in the world. We have also witnessed flight passenger numbers double over the past 20 years.
Infrastructure projects are typically planned 20 or more years ahead. This makes it more important than ever that we start to adopt a disruptive lens in planning. It’s time to start accounting for electric aviation if we are to capitalise on its potential economic and environmental benefits.

What can these aircraft do?
There are two main types of electric aircraft: short-haul planes and vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicles, including drones.
The key issue affecting the uptake of electric aircraft is the need to ensure enough battery energy density to support commercial flights. While some major impediments are still to be overcome, we are likely to see short-haul electric flights locally before 2030. Small, two-to-four-seat, electric planes are already flying in Australia today.


An electric plane service has been launched in Perth.

A scan of global electric aircraft development suggests rapid advancements are likely over the coming decade. By 2022, nine-seat planes could be doing short-haul (500-1,000km) flights. Before 2030, small-to-medium 150-seat planes could be flying up to 500 kilometres. Short-range (100-250 km) VTOL aircraft could also become viable in the 2020s.
If these breakthroughs occur, we could see small, commercial, electric aircraft operating on some of Australia’s busiest air routes, including Sydney-Melbourne or Brisbane, as well as opening up new, cost-effective travel routes to and from regional Australia.
Possible short-haul electric aircraft ranges of 500km and 1,000km around Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Author providedWhy go electric?
In addition to new export opportunities, as shown by MagniX, electric aviation could greatly reduce the financial and environmental costs of air transport in Australia.
Two major components of current airline costs are fuel (27%) and maintenance (11%). Electric aircraft could deliver significant price reductions through reduced energy and maintenance costs.
Short-haul electric aircraft are particularly compelling given the inherent energy efficiency, simplicity and longevity of the battery-powered motor and drivetrain. No alternative fuel sources can deliver the same level of savings.
With conventional planes, a high-passenger, high-frequency model comes with a limiting environmental cost of burning fuel. Smaller electric aircraft can avoid the fuel costs and emissions resulting from high-frequency service models. This can lead to increased competition between airlines and between airports, further lowering costs.

What are the implications of this disruption?
Air transport is generally organised in combinations of hub-and-spoke or point-to-point models. Smaller, more energy-efficient planes encourage point-to-point flights, which can also be the spokes on long-haul hub models. This means electric aircraft could lead to higher-frequency services, enabling more competitive point-to-point flights, and increase the dispersion of air services to smaller airports.
While benefiting smaller airports, electric aircraft could also improve the efficiency of some larger constrained airports.
For example, Australia’s largest airport, Sydney Airport, is efficient in both operations and costs. However, due to noise and pollution, physical and regulatory constraints – mainly aircraft movement caps and a curfew – can lead to congestion. With a significant number of sub-1,000km flights originating from Sydney, low-noise, zero-emission, electric aircraft could overcome some of these constraints, increasing airport efficiency and lowering costs.
The increased availability of short-haul, affordable air travel could actively compete with other transport services, including high-speed rail (HSR). Alternatively, if the planning of HSR projects takes account of electric aviation, these services could improve connectivity at regional rail hubs. This could strengthen the business cases for HSR projects by reducing the number of stops and travel times, and increasing overall network coverage.
Synchronised air and rail services could improve connections for travellers. Chuyuss/ShutterstockWhat about air freight?
Electric aircraft could also help air freight. International air freight volumes have increased by 80% in the last 20 years. Electric aircraft provide an opportunity to efficiently transport high-value products to key regional transport hubs, as well as directly to consumers via VTOL vehicles or drones.
If properly planned, electric aviation could complement existing freight services, including road, sea and air services. This would reduce the overall cost of transporting high-value goods.

Plan now for the coming disruption
Electric aircraft could significantly disrupt short-haul air transport within the next decade. How quickly will this technology affect conventional infrastructure? It is difficult to say given the many unknown factors. The uncertainties include step-change technologies, such as solid-state batteries, that could radically accelerate the uptake and capabilities of electric aircraft.
What we do know today is that Australia is already struggling with disruptive technological changes in energy, telecommunications and even other transport segments. These challenges highlight the need to start taking account of disruptive technology when planning infrastructure. Where we see billions of dollars being invested in technological transformation, we need to assume disruption is coming.
With electric aircraft we have some time to prepare, so let’s not fall behind the eight ball again – as has happened with electric cars – and start to plan ahead.

Links

• Electric aircraft - Wikipedia
• Why aren't there electric airplanes yet?
• Electric aircraft aren't far off, but we need to prepare
• Airlander 10: £1m grant for craft to go 'all-electric'
• Australia’s magniX chosen to power Eviation electric aircraft
• Harbour Air Is Switching Over To 100% Electric Seaplanes
• The future of flying is electric planes - Mashable
• Fly Electric: The Aircraft of the Future Takes Flight - The Atlantic
• Don't trust the environmental hype about electric vehicles? The economic benefits might convince you
• End of the road for traditional vehicles? Here are the facts

The Guardian - Tim Winton

Our leaders are ignoring global warming to the point of criminal negligence. It's unforgivable
Two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef was hit by back-to-back mass coral bleaching. Photograph: Kerryn Bell/ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies I’ve been asking myself a question – and even posing it makes me queasy.
Is it too late – are we beyond saving?
As a culture and a polity, when it comes to climate change, have we arrived at a point where we are now expected – even trained – to abandon hope and submit to the inevitable?
OK, I guess that’s two questions. In good faith I can still say that the answer to the first is no. But I’d be a liar and a fool to give the same response to the second.
No, it isn’t too late. But we’ve squandered decades of opportunities to mitigate and forestall impacts and we’re making a pig’s breakfast of responding to what is now a crisis. Even so, humans are not yet beyond saving themselves from the worst ravages of global warming. There’s fight in us yet, even if it’s a bit shapeless.
The problem – and it’s an existential threat both profound and perverse – is that those who lead us and have power over our shared destiny are ignoring global warming to the point of criminal negligence.
Worse than that, their policies, language, patronal obligations and acts of bad faith are poisoning us, training citizens to accept the prospect of inexorable loss, unstoppable chaos, certain doom. Business as usual is robbing people of hope, white-anting the promise of change. That’s not just delinquent, it’s unforgivable.
Over the last 15 years in Australia our national governments have failed to respond effectively to the challenge of climate change, and for most of that time we actually gave ourselves the luxury of calling it a challenge.
Now it’s more of a crisis. And it’s not as if our leaders are incapable of producing a timely response to a crisis. After all, in 2009 the government took bold steps to avoid an economic depression. And in the matter of refugees arriving by boat, governments still spend billions on emergency-level funding and infrastructure to meet what they view as a crisis of national security.
But in the case of climate change there’s no equivalent sense of immediacy, no sense of priority commensurate with the dangers it poses to our future ability to feed ourselves, defend our largely coastal settlements, insure our homes, maintain national security and keep our children safe from harm.
I worry that this widely-shared grief and unfocussed rage may become the signal human disposition of our timeThe message implicit in our governments’ refusal to act is that we should all just suck it up – as in “climate change is bullshit, and even if it’s not there’s nothing you can do about it”.
Once internalised, this narrative is profoundly dangerous, not only for individuals, but for the entire community. It’s a licence for nihilism, a ticket to hell in a handbasket. And the cohort responsible for this mixture of denial and fatalism is far removed from the daily experience of the ordinary citizen, especially the youngest and poorest of us. They have become a threat to our shared future and we must hold them to account, immediately and without reservation.
In the last 25 years I’ve observed a peculiar social phenomenon in individuals and communities that I mistakenly thought I understood because I was a child of the cold war.
Dead fish in the Darling River at Menindee, New South Wales, Australia. Officials on 28 January 2019, found hundreds of thousands of dead fish in the Menindee weir pool and neighbouring waterways. Photograph: Graeme Mccrabb Handout/EPA
While working to help save ecosystems across Australia I’ve noticed a bruised attitude of beleaguerment in individuals and within groups that’s increasingly hard to ignore, a mounting grimness in the faces and language of people barely holding on in the face of steady, cumulative and unrelenting losses.
They’re losing places, ecosystems, potential. It’s not restricted to activists; I see it in neighbourhoods and towns, I read it online, I get it in the mail. Ordinary folks – young and old – watching their waterways curdle, their soils blow away, their green spaces bulldozed, their fish gasping for air. Feeling wounded and betrayed, some are clinging to the last tendrils of hope, others are falling into despair. And that worries me.
Ecological depletion is being experienced communally as a mounting loss of access and an erosion of possibility. In essence, a pruning back of future prospects. It’s expressed as grief, and the most palpable, widespread and immediate expression of it is now brewing over climate change.
Beneath that grief there’s rage.
I worry that this widely-shared grief and unfocussed rage may become the signal human disposition of our time, that the Anthropocene will be marked by fury and hopelessness. This frightens me just as much as the prospect of beachside properties falling into the sea, or even the death of our coral reefs. Acidifying cultures are as chaotic and dangerous as acidifying oceans.
Younger people in particular have begun to feel abandoned by their leaders and elders. They suspect they’ll be left without food or ammunition to stage a fighting retreat in which every battle is a defeat foreseen and every bit of territory was surrendered in advance by politicians and CEOs who deserted them long ago to hide in their privileged bunkers and silos.
So what hope for our kids? Why should we be surprised they’d walk out of school and march? Their futures are being traded away before their eyes. They see what many of their elders and betters refuse to acknowledge. That they’re being robbed.
During the cold war many of us were gripped by dread – it was personal and communal – and in the books and films of the era our anxiety was palpable. We lived every day with the prospect of nuclear annihilation, and sometimes that possibility was clear, present and extremely proximate, a matter of hours and minutes when a possibility became an actual probability.
And for some time now I’ve been trying to see our current crisis through that lived experience. Because we survived, didn’t we? The worst never happened. No one pressed the button. So, chances are, all will be well this time, too – right?
The Great Barrier Reef experienced bleaching events so catastrophic they caused our most senior coral scientists to weepBut the reason humanity survived the cold war is because world leaders paid attention. They took emergent crises seriously. And in each instance of utmost danger, arguments of ideology and nationalism eventually fell away before the sacred importance of life itself. Beneath all the posturing there was, finally, a bedrock of humanity informing the technocrats and generals. Stepping back from the brink was expensive. Think what it cost in terms of pride, political prestige, assets, even territory. Consider the expenditure of ingenuity and infrastructure.
And there’s our problem. Because in this country, when it comes to climate change, there’s no equivalent attention to the crisis. For some there’s no crisis at all.
Our governments and corporations are ensnared in a feedback loop of “common sense” and mutual self-preservation that’s little more than a bespoke form of nihilism. Ideology, prestige, assets and territory are now tacitly understood to be worth more than all life, human or otherwise.
And the four great capacities of humanity to solve a crisis – ingenuity, discipline, courage and sacrifice – these seem to be reserved for more important enterprises. The future, by all accounts, can wait.
But the future is already with us. The button has been pushed – again and again.
In 2011, along hundreds of kilometres of the West Australian coast, abalone crawled off the reefs to die in their untold thousands on the baking white beaches because of a 2-degree spike in sea temperature. A little further north at Shark Bay, the world’s largest seagrass meadows suffered a sudden mortality of 20%. In the Northern Territory two years later, mangrove forests died along a 1,000km stretch of coast. And the Great Barrier Reef experienced successive bleaching events so catastrophic they caused the nation’s most senior coral scientists to weep.
Here’s the thing. To our current national government climate change is but a dry-lightning storm in a district unknown. For the denialists who control policy, the storm itself is an endlessly debatable phenomenon. And if the parish it’s lighting up really does exist, then it can safely be dismissed as remote and insignificant.
But that district is real. Most of us know it as the immediate future. Some know it as the present. And it’s already burning. It’s peopled with folks who weep and seethe and dread what else may lie ahead.
We can no longer wait patiently for our leaders to catch up. We cannot allow ourselves to be trained to accept hopelessness. Not by business, nor by governments. Both have subjected us to a steady diet of loss and depletion. It’s sapped us and left us mourning a future we can see fading before it even arrives.
There’s no good reason to submit to this. No sane purpose in putting up with it. Because grief will paralyse us, and despair renders doom inevitable. We can afford neither.
Australians can make a bad outcome inexorable by submitting to it meekly. Or we can fight for a viable future and meet this crisis shoulder to shoulder. I am of the passionate belief that we can and will. But to do this we’ll need to get our house in order – and fast. That means calling bullshit on what’s been happening in our name for the past 15 years.
It’s time to make sharp demands of our representatives, time to remove those who refuse to act in our common interest, time to elect people with courage, ingenuity and discipline, people who’ll sacrifice pride, privilege and even perks for the sake of something sacred.
Because there’s something bigger at stake here than culture wars and the mediocrity of so-called common-sense. It’s the soil under our feet, the water we drink, the air we breathe.
Life. It’s worth the fight. But, by God, after decades of appeasement, defeatism and denialism, it’s going to take a fight. Time’s short. So, let’s give our grief and fury some shape and purpose and reclaim our future together.
Enough cowardice.
Enough bullshit.
Time for action.

Links

• Enough scandalous time-wasting on climate change. Let's get back to the facts
• 'We’ve been forced into this': Australia's school climate strikes to go global
• This scientist thinks she has the key to curb climate change: super plants
• Greens propose supporting Labor climate policy in environment deal

Renew Economy - David Spratt*

Climate Emergency Key Findings:

• 60% of Victorians and 57% of Queenslanders agreed that Australia is facing a climate change emergency and should take emergency action (58% nationwide).
• More respondents in Queensland (56%) than Victoria (51%) support the Government mobilising climate efforts like they mobilised everyone during the world wars.
• Less than a third of voters (28%) agreed that what Australia does on climate change will make no difference.

In the first-ever poll of its kind, new research from The Australia Institute (TAI) has found that a clear majority of Australians agree the nation ‘is facing a climate emergency’ requiring emergency action.
In response, governments should “mobilise all of society” like they did during the world wars.
It is an extraordinary finding that shows public sentiment is well ahead of the major political parties, and ahead of the large climate advocacy organisations.
The findings are part of a larger survey which found majority support, and across the political parties, for:

• A rapid transition to 100% renewable energy; 
• A national program to switch to an electrically charged transport system;
• Stopping any more native forest logging, and 
• A large publicly-funded research program into zero-carbon industry and agriculture (See Table 1).

There was also more support than opposition for no new coal mines and no new exploration for new deposits of coal, oil or gas, but a clearer divide between the two political sides on these two issues.


The research sample was 1536 people across four states: Queensland, NSW, Victoria and WA.
The results were released as the ABC’s Vote Compass found that the environment (including climate change) is rated as the number one issue by 29 per cent of respondents in this federal election, a “massive shift” from just 9 per cent in 2016. The environment was nominated as the top concern among undecided voters.
Growing public concern about climate issues was also picked up in the annual Lowy Institute Poll on Australian attitudes released in June 2018, and in the TAI 2018 Climate of the Nation report.
The new TAI poll found that all statements in support of taking ambitious action on climate change received majority agreement, and all statements opposing ambition on climate change received majority disagreement. TAI says:
“Results show support for a wide range of ambitious climate policies and broad agreement that climate change is serious and can and should be addressed. What’s more, the support is present across Australia, rather than being focused in particular states.”Amongst the results:

•  Support was greatest for stopping any more native forest logging and reforesting other areas;
• Two in three supported a rapid transition to 100% renewable energy, including a majority of each party’s voters;
• Three in five supported a large publicly funded research program into zero-carbon industry and agriculture;
• Three in five supported a national program to switch to an electrically charged transport system;
• Half of Australians supported no new coal mines constructed and no new exploration for new deposits of coal, oil or gas.

But the biggest news is that almost six in 10 respondents agreed that “Australia is facing a climate change emergency and should take emergency action”, and over half agreed that governments should “mobilise all of society to tackle climate change, like they mobilised everyone during the world wars”.
On these two questions, every political party had more support than opposition (see Table 2). TAI notes that “It is especially significant that many respondents disagreed only modest changes are needed, but still supported these required changes.


This shows a good understanding that the fast transition now required will be disruptive and cause some pain, but people accept that is reasonable because a climate emergency level of economic mobilisation is now necessary.
A number of factors have probably contributed to these findings of high levels of understanding of the growing climate emergency, including:

• The sustained drought and year of extraordinary climate extremes in Australia; the slow death of the Great Barrier Reef;
• The more direct language employed by the likes of  Greta Thunberg, the school students strikers, Extinction Rebellion in the UK, and authors such as David Wallace-Wells over the last year;
• The growing climate emergency declarations by local governments in Australia and elsewhere; and the campaign to make this the “climate election”.

*David Spratt is Research Director for Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration

Links

• Australia Institute Report: Polling–Support for climate action across states (pdf)
• The Australia Institute
• Vote Compass finds voters are split on economy and environment as most important issue
• 2018 Lowy Institute Poll
• Australians increasingly concerned about climate change
• A record share of Australians say humans cause climate change: poll
• Government 'failing' on climate change: poll - SBS
• Climate change is a burning issue (again) in voters' minds

Vox - Eliza Barclay | Umair Irfan

Extinction Rebellion skillfully used civil disobedience to sound the alarm on the climate emergency.
Climate activists blocked Waterloo Bridge on April 16 as part of the Extinction Rebellion movement in London.
Amer Ghazzal / Barcroft Media via Getty Images  Thousands of activists unleashed strategic disorder in London for 10 days to draw attention to the accelerating climate crisis. In costume and in tents, they barricaded roads and bridges at major city landmarks, with more than 1,000 peacefully submitting to arrest.
The coordinated direct actions across the city were organized by Extinction Rebellion, a movement founded last year to demand a more aggressive climate target from the British government: net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.
With a core message that climate change is an “emergency” that threatens the survival of the human species, Extinction Rebellion sounded a shriller alarm than past climate protests. Members also deployed ostentatious, nonviolent tactics — such as gluing themselves to the Waterloo Bridge — at a scale that “has never been done before,” according to Alanna Byrne, a press coordinator with Extinction Rebellion.
“We know we have disrupted your lives,” the group said Wednesday in a statement. “We do not do this lightly. We only do this because this is an emergency.”
Extinction Rebellion’s urgency and energy on climate change is aligned with a wave of youth climate activism bubbling up in Europe, the United States, and beyond — including a series of student strikes, led by the riveting Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old from Sweden.
Thunberg arrived in London on Sunday to join the Extinction Rebellion protests and deliver a fiery speech to British members of Parliament, whom she says have failed to take climate change seriously: “You don’t listen to the science because you are only interested in solutions that will enable you to carry on like before,” she chided.
If a protest is measured by how much attention and irritation it stirs up, then Extinction Rebellion has been wildly successful. London Mayor Sadiq Khan, Conservative member of Parliament Boris Johnson, and media celebrities have all called the protesters a nuisance and asked them to stop. A couple of lawmakers and the actress Emma Thompson have rallied behind them.
“I think Extinction Rebellion is extremely important,” Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, told Vox. “They’re showing how much they care and that they’re willing to pay the price — be arrested — because government inaction on climate change is unacceptable. I hope it catches on.”
Yet as the protesters transition this week from disrupting transit to pleading with policymakers, new questions have emerged: How quickly can the UK get to net-zero emissions? And will Extinction Rebellion make a difference in setting that target?
Environmental activists from Extinction Rebellion march to Parliament Square on the ninth day of protest action, aiming to invite MPs to take part in people’s assembly on climate and ecological crisis as they return to the Commons after Easter break, on 23 April, 2019 in London, England.
Wiktor Szymanowicz/Barcroft Media/Getty Images  A brief history of Extinction Rebellion
Extinction Rebellion began in the minds of 15 organizers in April 2018 who were part of the UK activist group RisingUp!. The premise was that a more rebellious resistance was needed against “business as usual” and that governments needed to be pressured more to cut greenhouse gas emissions to zero.
Extinction Rebellion, also known as XR, officially launched in October, a few weeks after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a massive report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Its key message, which reverberated around the world, was that humanity still has a shot at limiting warming to 1.5°C, and thereby avoiding further catastrophe in the form of disease, famine, water scarcity, and sea-level rise. But time is running out — we may have as little as 11 years left to hit that target, and we are way off track.
The movement also burst onto the scene with the explicit support of the leftist Guardian columnist George Monbiot, who wrote on October 18 that “a people’s rebellion is the only way to fight climate breakdown.”
The movement introduced its “Declaration of Rebellion” at London’s Parliament Square October 31, with the goal of “peaceful civil disobedience, traffic disruption, and symbolic criminal actions” highlighting the British government’s inaction on the climate emergency.
A man holds a placard with a dinosaur drawn on it during a protest about climate change in the middle of Oxford Circus on April 15, 2019, in London, United Kingdom. Extinction Rebellion has blocked five central London landmarks in protest against government inaction on climate change.
Jonathan Perugia/In Pictures/Getty Images  In November, XR shut down several streets in London and targeted government buildings with acts of mass civil disobedience. These, according to XR, would be “minor inconveniences when compared to the potential extinction we are facing.”
XR does not feature any individual leaders on its website. Rather, it describes itself as “a movement that is participatory, decentralized, and inclusive.” Its mission is to get 3.5 percent of the population involved in changing the system — using ideas such as “momentum-driven organizing.” Spinoff groups have now formed in dozens of countries, including the US.
On April 15, XR began a fresh round of actions to shut down London, some of which extended for 10 days. They took a large pink boat emblazoned with the words “Tell The Truth” to Oxford Circus, staged a “die-in” at the Natural History Museum to bring attention to the mass die-off of species, barricaded roads, locked and glued themselves to the Waterloo Bridge, climbed on top of trains, and sat in trees in Parliament Square. Actress Emma Thompson appeared at the Oxford Circus event on Friday.
As of Friday, more than 1,000 people had been arrested in the protests, most of them for violating orders about where protests are permitted.
While they did not completely shut down the city of 8.1 million, they did cause considerable disruption, prompting the irritated mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to tweet on Sunday that the protests had become “counter-productive” and that the protestors should “let London return to business as usual.”


Climate experts took this as an opportunity to point out that “business as usual” in the context of climate change means utterly catastrophic global warming.


Former London Mayor Boris Johnson, who’s now a member of Parliament, also scolded the protesters and encouraged them to instead blame China for its greenhouse gas emissions. “Surely this is the time for the protesters to take their pink boat to Tiananmen Square, and lecture them in the way they have been lecturing us,” he wrote in the Telegraph. (China does contribute a large and growing share of global emissions — which must be slowed down and reversed — but most of the warming we’re experiencing now is due to the past emissions of wealthier countries like the UK and US.)
Yet not all Londoners were unhappy with the disruption, and many tweeted about how much they enjoyed the opportunity to participate.


Extinction Rebellion protesters in London have three key demands
The protestors want three things from the UK government:

1. For climate change to be treated as an emergency
2. A commitment to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025
3. The creation of a citizen assembly for climate action

“We don’t want to be doom and gloom, but we also think it’s really, really important to use emergency messaging,” said XR’s Byrne. “One of the major problems that we have is that so many people are not aware of the crisis we’re in and we want the government to be talking about it.”
While the UK government is already mired in Brexit negotiations that have continued to drag on, protestors argue that climate change poses an even bigger threat to the long-term health and security of the country and deserves the same, if not more, political attention.
Climate change activists in red costume protest during the ongoing Extinction Rebellion climate change demonstration, near the Houses of Parliament in central London on April 23, 2019.
Isabel Infantes/AFP/Getty Images As for the citizen assembly, campaigners say that this is a way to address the inherent inequities of climate change — that the people who contributed the least stand to suffer the most — and to bring more solutions to bear.
It’s also a way to make sure everyone is included in a decision-making process that could ripple throughout all of society. “We don’t think the government is capable of sorting this out themselves,” Byrne said. “We need expert knowledge on this, we need everybody to have a say in how we move forward.”

Is net-zero emissions by 2025 a reasonable goal?
XR’s demand for the UK to commit to net-zero emissions by 2025 comes at an interesting moment. The UK is already committed to 80 percent reductions by 2050, and as Vox’s David Roberts has reported, that’s been going pretty well so far, as coal has declined dramatically.
But the hardest work lies ahead: the country now must tackle “emissions from aviation, agriculture, biomass, and above all transportation, which in the UK (as in the US) is now the largest source of emissions.” Oh, and gas boilers; the UK has a lot of those.
As the Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg noted in her Monday speech, another obstacle to net-zero emissions by 2025 is that the UK is still developing new fossil fuels.
“The UK’s active current support of new exploitation of fossil fuels — for example, the UK shale gas fracking industry, the expansion of its North Sea oil and gas fields, the expansion of airports as well as the planning permission for a brand new coal mine — is beyond absurd,” she said.
On May 2, the Committee on Climate Change, an independent body tasked with advising the UK government on emissions targets, will deliver a long-awaited report on how and when the country can reach net-zero emissions. (The CCC declined to comment for this story.) The CCC is expected to propose 2050 as the net-zero target. “2050 is do-able and desirable and would have an insignificant overall cost to the economy,” Lord Turner, chair of the Energy Transitions Commission, told the Observer.
But UK politics seems to be shifting in favor of tougher climate targets. Leaders from the Labour party came out in support of XR on Tuesday, and organizers are hoping for meetings with environment secretary Michael Gove and energy minister Claire Perry next week.
As Dawn Foster writes in Jacobin, “Whereas [former Prime Minister Tony] Blair’s government would have clamped down hard on the protestors and [former Labour Party leader] Ed Miliband’s Labour would have condemned, or at least refused to support, the protestors, Labour now see the protests as an opportunity to nail the Conservatives for ignoring climate change and the environment.”
But some in the UK government have already dismissed the XR demand, claiming that net zero by 2025 is politically impossible. “Yes, you could decarbonize Britain by 2025 but the cost of implementing such vast changes at that speed would be massive and hugely unpopular,” Turner told the Observer.
Nonetheless, in this moment of crisis, young leaders will keep reminding us of how resourceful humans can be in the face of a challenge. “Sometimes we just simply have to find a way. The moment we decide to fulfill something, we can do anything,” Thunberg said. “And I’m sure that the moment we start behaving as if we were in an emergency, we can avoid climate and ecological catastrophe. Humans are very adaptable: We can still fix this.”
Can the UK fix it to the tune of net-zero emissions by 2025? Why not try?

Links

• Extinction Rebellion And Attenborough Put Climate In Spotlight 
• Extinction Rebellion: I’m An Academic Embracing Direct Action To Stop Climate Change 
• Dozens Arrested After Climate Protest Blocks Five London Bridges 
• VIDEO: David Attenborough Climate Change TV Show A 'Call To Arms' 
• The Human Survival Summit: The Next Wave Of Climate Change Protests Is Coming 
• Radical Environmentalists Are Fighting Climate Change – So Why Are They Persecuted? 
• The Uncanny Power Of Greta Thunberg’s Climate-Change Rhetoric
• The Guardian View On Greta Thunberg: Seizing The Future
• Greta Thunberg Backs Climate General Strike To Force Leaders To Act
• Humanity Is At A Crossroads, Greta Thunberg Tells Extinction Rebellion
• Climate Campaigners May Sound Naive. But They’re Asking The Right Questions
• Why Fear And Anger Are Rational Responses To Climate Change
• Woman Fest Founder Plans Training Camp For Climate Rebels

University of Melbourne - Professor Ian Young | Dr Agustinus Ribal

Using billions of satellite measurements, new research shows ocean waves and the winds that generate them have been increasing for the last 30 years
Getty ImagesDuring extreme storms, ocean waves can be more than 20 metres high, or as tall as a five-storey building.
More than being just a product of our weather systems, waves are critical for ocean shipping, the stability of beaches, coastal inundation or flooding and determining the design of coastal and offshore structures.
Extreme wave conditions are increasing around the world. Picture: Getty ImagesBut our new research, published in Science, shows that these waves, and the winds that generate them, are increasing in magnitude and have been doing so for the last 30 years.
These new measurements show that global average wave conditions are increasing but, more importantly, extreme wave conditions are increasing even more rapidly with the largest increases occurring in the Southern Ocean.
We found that extreme winds in the Southern Ocean have increased by approximately 1.5 metres per second or 8 per cent over the last 30 years. Similarly, extreme waves in this same region have increased by 30 centimetres or 5 per cent. Generally, winds are increasing at a faster rate than the waves.
In addition to the increases in the Southern Ocean, extreme winds have also increased in the equatorial Pacific and Atlantic, and the North Atlantic by approximately 0.6 metres per second over the 30 year period.
These changes in ocean wind and wave climates were determined by creating and analysing a database of satellite measurements of wind speed and wave height.
We used data from a total of 31 satellites that were in orbit between 1985 and 2018. For more than thirty years, these satellites made approximately 4 billion measurements of wind speed and wave height.
Global trends in extreme (90th percentile) wind speed (top) and wave height (bottom) over the period 1985-2018. Areas which a red indicate increasing values, whereas blue indicates decreases. Picture: Supplied
Although the data set is huge, to be useful all the satellites needed to be very precisely calibrated. This was done by comparing the satellite measurements with more than 80 ocean buoys deployed around the world. This is the largest and most detailed database of its type ever compiled.
Importantly, within the combined database, there are three different forms of satellites – altimeters, radiometers and scatterometers. They used different methods to measure ocean waves, so combining them provides an even more robust data set.
The increases in extreme wave height are less uniform than the winds. In addition to increases in the Southern Ocean, the heights of extreme waves are also increasing in the North Atlantic. The rate of increase in wind speed and wave height is shown in the graphs above.
Although increases of 5 per cent for waves and 8 per cent for winds may not seem like much, if sustained into the future such changes to our climate will have major ramifications. The potential impacts of climate induced sea level rises are well known. What most people don’t understand is that the actual flooding events are caused by storm surges and breaking waves associated with storms.
The increased sea level just makes these wind and wave events more serious and more frequent. Increases in wave height and other properties such as wave direction will further increase the probability of coastal flooding. Changes like these will also cause enhanced coastal erosion, putting at risk coastal settlements and infrastructure.
Changes in the Southern Ocean can have impacts that are felt around the world. Picture: Getty ImagesWe still don’t know if the historical increases will be sustained into the future. One of the important uses of the extensive satellite database will be to calibrate and validate the next generation of global climate models which are now including ocean wave predictions. Early results from such models yield similar results to the historical record and particularly point to changes in the Southern Ocean.
Changes in the Southern Ocean are important, as this is the origin for swell that dominates the wave climate of the South Pacific, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and determines the stability of beaches for much of the Southern Hemisphere.
Changes in the Southern Ocean can have impacts that are felt around the world, with storm waves increasing coastal erosion, and putting costal settlements and infrastructure at risk.
International research teams including the University of Melbourne, are now working to develop the next generation of global climate models to project changes in winds and waves over the next 100 years.
We need a better understanding of how much of this change is due to long-term climate change, and how much is due to multi-decadal fluctuations, or cycles.

Links

• Exploring the birthplace of monster waves
• Protecting our coasts naturally
• Heating up: How rises in global temperature could damage the Reef
• Global warming could accelerate towards 1.5℃ if the Pacific Ocean gets cranky
• Heating up: How rises in global temperature could damage the Reef
• Breeding baby corals for warmer seas

Washington Post - Richard Glover

Students protested in March against a coal mine near the Great Barrier Reef and the inadequate progress to address climate change in Sydney. (Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images)Back in February 2017, Scott Morrison, now the prime minister of Australia, brought a lump of coal to Parliament. He waved it around.
“This is coal,” Morrison told his fellow legislators. “Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared.”
Morrison went on to mock the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, over his party’s enthusiasm for renewable energy. “If Bill Shorten becomes the prime minister,” Morrison said, “all the lights will go off around the country.”
Such sentiments may have won votes two years ago, but they seem less sure-fire today. Morrison’s government is facing an election on May 18 and climate change is a key issue among voters.
In a recent survey, 23 percent of respondents cited the environment as one of their key concerns, sharply up from the 14 percent recorded in 2016, at the time of the last election. The latest polls predict the coalition government’s defeat, with the Labor Party heading for a clear victory.
Young voters, who have registered in record numbers, are particularly passionate about the issue, with 39 percent of respondents under that age of 35 now rating the environment as their No. 1 concern.
Why the shift? Australia is the middle of a particularly savage drought. This past January was the nation’s hottest on record, and large swaths of the country received a fifth of their normal rainfall. There were wildfires in Tasmania and floods in Queensland. Temperatures in March also broke records.
Along parts of the iconic Darling River, the stagnant water turned toxic over summer. Several million fish died and in December and January, their bloated bodies floating to the surface. In one video, two distressed locals each cradled a huge, dead Murray Cod, one declaring some of the dead fish to be 100 years old. An expert panel from the Australian Academy of Science disagreed with that age assessment, yet still assessed the fish as being up to 25 years old — meaning they had endured, and survived, many previous dry spells.
This drought, in other words, was different.
Adding to the change in mood is a growing cynicism about government fear-mongering over renewables. For some years, Morrison’s side has sounded shrill when discussing the cost of a low-carbon economy.
Barnaby Joyce, a significant figure in the governing coalition, at one point predicted a tax on carbon would make a single cow or sheep cost as much as a house. In 2011, Tony Abbott, who later became prime minister, declared the science around climate change was “absolute crap” and said a carbon price would wipe large industrial towns such as Whyalla “off the map.”
Such predictions have moderated over time, yet the government’s wariness about carbon-reduction has continued.
Just this month, a massive new coal mine has been approved for Queensland, despite its potential impact on Australia’s most significant natural wonder: the already damaged Great Barrier Reef.
More bizarrely, in terms of a pro-business government, there were suggestions that a coal-fired power plant be forcibly acquired from its private owners — just to keep it open. The private company, AGL, resisted, citing business reasons for its desire to shift to renewables.
The Labor Party also faces criticism. It has failed in the past to follow through on its climate change commitments. This time around, some point to Labor’s unwillingness to predict the cost of its carbon-abatement plans.
The government, meanwhile, claims to be on track to meet the country’s carbon-reduction targets. Its leadership — whatever the arguments over policy — now accepts the science of anthropogenic climate change.
And yet some still argue that Australia, because of its small population, has a negligible impact on global warning. To me, this is the worst argument for doing nothing.
It’s true that Australia was responsible for just 1.1 percent of global emissions in 2016, ranking Australia No. 16 among the most polluting countries in the world. And yet, per capita, we’re among the worst.
More to the point, as I’ve argued before, it’s pathetic and absurd to say small countries have no role in solving big problems.
Australia could have adopted the same “little us” argument during World War II. Who needs the Australians when such valiant work was being done by others — the Brits, the Russians, the Americans, the Canadians? It’s true, I suppose, that the Allies would have won without the Australians — the nearly 1 million of our people who served; the 27,073 who were killed in action.
But how is that an argument for not doing your bit?
The unstated thought: Important battles should be left to others. Smaller nations can stand on the sidelines and freeload.
Australia is more at risk from climate change than almost any other country in the developed world. It’s taken us a while, but — with this election — many Australians are signaling a desire to put their shoulder to the wheel.

Links

• The 10 things that worry voters most - and how that's changed since the last election
• Vote Compass finds voters are split on economy and environment as most important issue
• Joyce's $100 roast prediction rubbished
• Australia one of the countries most exposed to climate change, bank warns
• A Climate Reckoning Is Coming To Our Political Hothouse
• Experts Find 'Integrity Issues' With Coalition's Direct Action Policy
• The Next Reckoning: Capitalism And Climate Change
• The Carbon Brief Profile: Australia
• Now Adani Has Been Approved, These Are The Nine At-Risk Coalition Seats Most Concerned About Climate Change
• In Australia, Climate Policy Battles Are Endlessly Reheated
• Coalition Hits Bottom Of Barrel With Fake News Campaign Against Electric Cars
• Electric Vehicles An Opportunity For Local Government
• News Corp Launches Offensive Against Labor's Climate Policy Amid Glowing Budget 2019 Previews
• The Challenge Facing Labor On Climate Change
• ALP Climate Policy Requires Serious Scrutiny
• Hopes Emerge For A 'Great Era Of Bipartisanship' On Clean Energy Policy
• Australia Stops Payments To Green Climate Fund
• Coalition's Climate Solutions Fund Must Last A Further Five Years

Grist - Kate Yoder

Isabel Infantes / AFP / Getty ImagesBanksy, the famously anonymous street artist, appears to have lent his (or maybe her) talents to sounding the alarm about the climate crisis.
A new mural showed up in central London near Hyde Park on Thursday night, and a Banksy collector thinks it’s legit. The mural depicts a young girl with a just-planted seedling who’s holding a tiny sign bearing the symbol of Extinction Rebellion, a new group using civil disobedience to draw attention to government inaction on climate change. The words alongside it say “From this moment despair ends and tactics begin.”
The child is stenciled on a concrete block at the Marble Arch landmark, where Extinction Rebellion protestors had recently set up camp. Over the past week and a half, activists have barricaded roads and bridges across London, demanding that the British government set a target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. More than a thousand of them have been arrested in the nonviolent protests.
Banksy has not yet confirmed that the mural is authentic, but the artist has created artwork about similar themes, like rising seas and sooty air, before.
Back in 2009, for instance, Banksy depicted a classic climate denial statement — “I don’t believe in global warming” — sinking into the water of a canal in north London.
Zak Hussein / PA Images via Getty ImagesAnother Banksy artwork last December took on air pollution. Painted on the corner of a garage in Port Talbot, one of the most polluted towns in the U.K., it looked like a kid enjoying the snow. Until you see around the corner, when it becomes clear that the “snow” is actually debris from a flaming dumpster.
Matt Cardy / Getty ImagesSo if Banksy is an activist trying to raise awareness about our present peril, well, unlike his or her identity, that’s not a well-kept secret.

Links

• London Extinction Rebellion mural is a Banksy, says expert
• Art work from Banksy, poking fun at climate change deniers
• Street artists are joining the fight to save the environment
• Banksy's Latest Mural Is a Haunting Take on Air Pollution
• Climate change is real by unknown artist
• UNICEF - Street art as a messenger for climate change action

AFR - Editorial

The Greens have set a renewable energy target of 100 per cent for the power sector by 2030 as part of their climate policy goals for the federal election. Jo BuchananAustralia’s share market jumped yesterday on the back of higher world oil prices, prompted by Donald Trump’s hardline stance against oil-exporting Iran.
Protesting climate change absolutists might deny it. But clean energy policies need to come clean about the costs they will impose on Australia’s fossil fuel prosperity.
Denying the costs of decarbonising an economy that has developed on the back of clean fossil fuels has ended up undermining public acceptance, fomenting the political climate wars and disrupting investment confidence.
The result has handicapped efforts to reduce Australia’s carbon emissions and destroyed Australia’s traditional competitive advantage in cheap energy.
When Labor announced its new climate policy the day before the April 2 federal budget, The AFR View backed the return toward a carbon price through a limited form of an emissions trading scheme for big companies.
But Bill Shorten, we said, needed to provide credible reassurance that his ambitious target to cut emissions by 45 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030 – against the Coalition government’s goal of 26 to 28 per cent – would not come at a significantly greater cost. Last week, Mr Shorten was finally forced to confront the question and made a hash of it, just as he did on negative gearing and the taxation of super.
He eventually fell back on ANU professor Warwick McKibbin’s modelling for the Abbott government in 2015, suggesting that the Labor and Coalition targets would both cost the same – though only if Labor’s plan relied more on buying cheaper carbon abatement permits from offshore. Otherwise, Labor’s plan would cost $60 billion more by 2030: not crippling given the size of the economy, but not chicken feed either.

Increasingly competitive
But more importantly, as Professor McKibbin wrote on these pages yesterday, economic modelling of carbon policies merely offers a range of plausible cost comparisons that inevitably will vary as the uncertain future unfolds.
Labor’s deeper problem is that it seeks to redistribute the shares of a slowly growing national income pie while saddling it with more ambitious carbon reduction targets; increased taxes on savers, investors and wealth creators; a higher minimum wage floor; and more burdensome pro-union workplace regulations on employers who have to do business in an increasingly competitive global market. It doesn’t add up.
Labor has been able to get away with this, in part because the Coalition’s own climate change civil war has resulted in such a hodge-podge policy. The Coalition has failed for six years to create a coherent energy plan.
When it was on the cusp of one in 2018 with the National Energy Guarantee – itself a compromise on the Clean Energy Target developed by Professor Alan Finkel’s review – it politically decapitated Malcolm Turnbull.
Then it came up with a most un-Liberal plan to reduce power prices by bludgeoning energy companies with a big stick of threatened breakup, backed by a sudden rush to large-scale hydro. And last week, Scott Morrison slammed Labor for proposing to allow business to buy international carbon permits or offsets to hit its more ambitious emissions target.
It is Australia’s national interest to allow individual countries to reduce emissions at lowest cost, where ever they occur on the planet. By rejecting this, Mr Morrison has effectively put the Coalition on the same side as the Greens.
The use of international credits is simply an extension of the idea that a robust climate change policy should be like good tax reform policy – as broad-based as possible to spread and minimise the cost. That is what an economy-wide carbon price would do best – and which Labor is closer to. At the same time, a good climate change policy has to avoid “carbon leakage” that would simply drive emissions-intensive industries offshore. That would hurt Australian prosperity without helping the planet.
The election campaign reflects the deep contradiction of Australian climate policy.
On the one hand, there’s a swell of opposition against the proposed Adani coal-export project that would deliver first-world power to poor Indian households.
On the other hand, the election supposedly is about the cost of living pressures led by rising Australian power bills as a result of botched climate change policy.
Both sides of politics remain trapped in this policy black hole.

Links

• A Climate Reckoning Is Coming To Our Political Hothouse
• Experts Find 'Integrity Issues' With Coalition's Direct Action Policy
• The Next Reckoning: Capitalism And Climate Change
• The Carbon Brief Profile: Australia
• Now Adani Has Been Approved, These Are The Nine At-Risk Coalition Seats Most Concerned About Climate Change
• In Australia, Climate Policy Battles Are Endlessly Reheated
• Coalition Hits Bottom Of Barrel With Fake News Campaign Against Electric Cars
• Electric Vehicles An Opportunity For Local Government
• News Corp Launches Offensive Against Labor's Climate Policy Amid Glowing Budget 2019 Previews
• The Challenge Facing Labor On Climate Change
• ALP Climate Policy Requires Serious Scrutiny
• Hopes Emerge For A 'Great Era Of Bipartisanship' On Clean Energy Policy
• Australia Stops Payments To Green Climate Fund
• Coalition's Climate Solutions Fund Must Last A Further Five Years