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Medical Journal of Australia - Gerard J FitzGerald | Anthony Capon | Peter Aitken

A system that integrates all aspects of health care is essential for facing future challenges

After another Australian summer of record‐breaking temperatures, bushfires, floods and widespread drought, it is clear that our health systems should be strengthened to cope with the challenges of climate change.
We must also reduce the carbon footprint of health care, and continue to advocate that Australia play its part in dealing with the fundamental causes of climate change.
In May, the 21st biennial congress of the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WADEM) will be hosted by Brisbane.
The congress will bring together investigators and practitioners from around the world to discuss disaster health care, future risks, community vulnerabilities, and the strategies required by resilient health systems.
The threats resulting from climate change will differ according to location. The rise in temperatures will not be consistent across the planet, and may increase or reduce local rainfall, depending on other factors.
The effects of climate change will also vary regionally as individuals and societies adapt behaviourally, structurally, and physiologically. Effective adaptation will require economic competence and leadership.
Australia is geophysically stable, protecting us to some extent from catastrophic events such as earthquakes and tsunamis, but we are vulnerable to climate‐related disasters and emergencies, including heatwaves, bushfires, droughts, cyclones and floods, the frequency, intensity and duration of which are being amplified by climate change.
Rising temperatures affect the health and wellbeing of people directly, causing heat stress, hyperpyrexia and heat stroke, as well as indirectly through their impact on individuals with chronic cardiovascular, respiratory and renal diseases or mental health problems, and by changing the distributions of allergens and pathogens and their vectors.
These effects can be moderated by adaptive strategies but exacerbated by other factors, such as pollution and humidity, as well as by dehydration, exercise, and infectious diseases and other health conditions.
Climate change will affect whole communities, and migration and relocation of populations are likely, determined by the habitability of particular localities and the economic viability of certain industries.
The health consequences of disasters require nuanced assessment to ensure that our responses are targeted appropriately. Identifying immediate direct effects (injuries and deaths) is relatively straightforward, but longer term impacts and indirect health consequences are less clear.
For example, while 64 deaths in Puerto Rico could be directly attributed to Hurricane Maria in 2017, the estimated increase in all‐cause mortality over the following 3 months was 4645 deaths. Even in high income countries such as Australia, the long term consequences — particularly the long term mental health effects — of climate‐related events are difficult to predict, and the strategies required to minimise them will depend on the overall effectiveness of our health system.
Indeed, lack of access to ongoing health care is often the greatest threat to health and wellbeing after disasters and emergencies in highly developed countries. At the same time, we need to consider the risks of relying on electronic systems and ensure that structural redundancy and cybersecurity measures are in place.
So how do we prepare our health systems for climate‐related disasters and emergencies? We need to plan to safeguard both their capability and capacity to respond to these situations. Firstly, we need to take a whole‐of‐system approach, integrating all elements of population health and health care throughout the continuum of preparedness, response, and recovery.
As Burns and her colleagues argue in this issue of the MJA, it is particularly important to better incorporate primary care into such planning. While Australia has a relatively resilient health care system, it is subject to the routine pressures of a growing and ageing population.
We have never experienced an emergency event with 22 000 casualties — but every day 22 000 people attend hospital emergency departments. We need systems that can respond with standardised policies and procedures to a wide range of problems, from the routine to the unexpected, and to do so for both small and large scale events.
This also demands an integrated approach that brings together state and federally funded organisations. A system that integrates all areas of health care — community, primary, hospital, and aged care, as well as public and mental health care — is essential for facing future challenges.
Secondly, we need to improve the timeliness of surveillance.
Current disease notification systems are slow, and monitoring of the response capacity of the health system relies on individuals recognising and reporting emerging problems. Enhanced real time surveillance of ambulance, emergency department, and hospital capacities and of patterns of demand should enable more timely recognition of new problems and increase the response capability of the health system.
Thirdly, we need to determine the standards of care relevant to particular situations. In extreme events, this includes sympathetic care for people who cannot be saved.
A comprehensive whole‐of‐system approach will help Australia build a resilient health system that can adapt to the challenges of climate change.
The task will not be easy, and there will inevitably be difficult discussions for all health professionals.
 Whole‐of‐system approaches are feasible if they are built upon routine processes and they respectfully engage all elements of the health system, both institutional and community‐based.
The article by Burns and colleagues in this issue of the Journal can help start the discussion, and the WADEM congress in May will develop it further.

Links

• Strengthen health systems to cope with climate change challenges
• Primary care in disasters: opportunity to address a hidden burden of health care
• Climate change a health risk, not just an environmental issue
• Australian policy inaction on climate change threatens lives
• Climate change: eminent Australians slam government inaction
• Australia’s healthcare system: can it cope with climate change?
• Doctors Warn Australian Health System Not Prepared For Climate Change
• Australian Doctors Declare A Climate Emergency
• Why Fear And Anger Are Rational Responses To Climate Change
• Climate Change Will Expose Half Of World’s Population To Disease-Spreading Mosquitoes By 2050
• Climate Change And The Risk To Civilisation: The Doctors' Prescription
• Save Millions Of Lives By Tackling Climate Change, Says WHO
• The Climate Apocalypse Is Now, And It’s Happening To You
• Climate Change Already A Health Emergency, Say Experts
• Climate Change Threatens Our Children's Health As Well As Their Future
• 'Scandal': NSW Coal Power Plants Will Kill Thousands Before They Close
• African Islands Call For Help As Climate Change Worsens Health

Fairfax - Natassia Chrysanthos

Leading company directors have expressed widespread concern over energy and climate change policy, and have warned the lack of clear direction is affecting investment and affordability.
Directors across the private, public and non-profit sectors said climate change was the number one long-term and number two short-term issue for the federal government to address when responding to the Australian Institute of Company Directors' (AICD) half-yearly report on director sentiment.
AICD chief executive Angus Armour said there was a "great deal of convergence" surrounding what was a "very serious policy issue".
Australian Institute of Company Directors chief executive Angus Amour. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer"In the context of the current election, the director community, which I think represents the views of the broader community, would be looking for competing parties to be very clear in what they intend to do," he said."We’ve reached a point where a second-best option that was agreed on a bipartisan basis, that would carry forward the next five or 10 years, would still be better than no policy certainty at all."
While taxation reform remains a significant short-term issue for  directors, it dropped on a relative level as concern for government action on climate change rose by 12 percentage points in the past six months.Directors' immediate priority remains energy policy, with 50 per cent nominating it as the most important area for government action.Renewable energy was considered the top area of importance for infrastructure investment by 51 per cent of directors, ahead of regional infrastructure, water supply, roads and telco networks such as the NBN.
Mr Amour said there was "widespread" concern across the community about climate and energy policy affecting investment and affordability.Climate change was identified as the third biggest economic challenge facing Australian business, following global economic uncertainty and China's outlook."It’s not just business," Mr Amour said. "It’s non-profits, it’s small business - everyone is calling for certainty around climate change police and energy policy."The length of time that’s passed without certainty for energy policy has clearly made it a top of mind issue for our community."
The report also showed directors were the least confident about the outlook for business they have been since the first half of 2015.
The number of directors who predict the Australian economy to be weak over the next year has nearly doubled over the past six months, with 50 per cent having a low assessment of the health of the domestic economy.
Links

• Experts find 'integrity issues' with Coalition's direct action policy
• Directors' doom and gloom should be wake-up call for Canberra
• Coal's days are numbered, top government adviser says
• Health system needs to be protected from climate change: doctors
• Flying cars could help in the fight against climate change
• Ipsos poll: Voters back Labor to deal with climate change
• The other climate risk being taken by ASX companies
• 'Like paying someone else to go on a diet': Labor's carbon permit policy attacked from both sides
• Experts find 'integrity issues' with Coalition's direct action policy
• Radical climate action 'critical' to Great Barrier Reef's survival, government body says
• Underwater, Seychelles President makes emotional plea to save the seas
• 'State and planet': new environment minister highlights plans for climate change action

The Guardian - Jennifer Rankin

Teenager who started school strike movement urges MEPs to ‘wake up and take action’


Greta Thunberg's emotional speech to EU leaders

Who is Greta Thunberg?'Never too small to make a difference'Thunberg (16) began a solo climate protest by striking from school in Sweden in August 2018. She has since been joined by tens of thousands of school and university students in Australia, Belgium, Germany, the United States, Japan and more than a dozen other countries.'Irresponsible children'Speaking at the United Nations climate conference in December 2018, she berated world leaders for behaving like irresponsible children. And in January 2019 she rounded on the global business elite in Davos: “Some people, some companies, some decision-makers in particular, have known exactly what priceless values they have been sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money. And I think many of you here today belong to that group of people.”InspirationVeteran climate campaigners are astonished by what has been achieved in such a short time. Thunberg has described the rapid spread of school strikes for climate around the world as amazing. “It proves you are never too small to make a difference,” she said. Her protests were inspired by US students who staged walk-outs to demand better gun controls in the wake of multiple school shootings.FamilyHer mother, Malena Ernman, has given up her international career as an opera singer because of the climate effects of aviation. Her father is actor Svante Thunber. Greta has Asperger’s syndrome, which in the past has affected her health, he says. She sees her condition not as a disability but as a gift which has helped open her eyes to the climate crisis. The teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has chided EU leaders for holding three emergency summits on Brexit and none on the threat posed by climate change.
In a clarion call to Europe’s political leaders ahead of European parliament elections in May, the founder of the school strike movement said if politicians were serious about tackling climate change they would not spend all their time “talking about taxes or Brexit”.
In a typically blunt speech, she said politicians were failing to take enough action on climate change and the threats to the natural world.
“Our house is falling apart and our leaders need to start acting accordingly because at the moment they are not,” the 16-year old schoolgirl from Sweden told a standing room-only meeting of MEPs and EU officials in Strasbourg.
“If our house was falling apart our leaders wouldn’t go on like we do today,” she said. “If our house was falling apart, you wouldn’t hold three emergency Brexit summits and no emergency summit regarding the breakdown of the climate and the environment.”
While climate change is sometimes discussed at the EU’s regular summits, the issue has never dominated because Brexit, migration or the eurozone crisis have monopolised the attention of Europe’s top leaders.
Greta’s 10-minute speech was interrupted by frequent applause and ended with a 30-second standing ovation.
Before she began speaking, many in the room rose to their feet to applaud and take photos of her as she sat on the podium surrounded by cameras.
As the young climate activist spoke of a “sixth mass extinction”, her voice faltered. “The extinction rate is up to six times faster than what is considered normal, with up to 200 species becoming extinct every single day,” she said. “Erosion of fertile topsoil, deforestation of the rainforest, toxic air pollution, loss of insects and wildlife, acidification of our oceans – these are all disastrous trends.”
She was applauded after getting to the end of the passage and continued the speech without faltering again.
Greta had previously addressed the UN climate change summit in Poland and the World Economic Forum in Davos since her lone protest outside the Swedish parliament last August triggered a worldwide school strike movement to raise the alarm about climate change.
Neither was it the first time Greta had taken her uncompromising message to the EU institutions. In February, she told an audience including the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU needed to double the ambition of its climate targets.
Greta Thunberg wipes her eyes as she delivers her speech on climate change to MEPs in Strasbourg. Photograph: AFP/Getty ImagesAt that time, the parliament’s senior leaders, led by the European parliament president, Antonio Tajani, decided against inviting Greta to address MEPs in the parliament’s debating chamber. Centre-right and liberal groups argued against the invitation, which had been proposed by the Greens. Objections ranged from the potential vulnerability of a child exposed to the chamber to a desire to reserve the plenary address for politicians or senior officials.
The meeting took place in the more low-key setting of a special meeting of the European parliament’s environment committee.
Noting the imminent European elections and the fact that her generation could not vote, Greta urged MEPs to listen to scientists and millions of children who had taken part in school strikes. “In this election, you vote for the future living conditions of humankind,” she said.
Referring to Monday’s fire at Notre Dame in Paris in her speech, Greta called for “cathedral thinking” to tackle climate change.
“It is still not too late to act. It will take a far-reaching vision, it will take courage, it will take fierce, fierce determination to act now, to lay the foundations where we may not know all the details about how to shape the ceiling,” she said. “In other words it will take cathedral thinking. I ask you to please wake up and make changes required possible.”

Links

• Greta Thunberg, schoolgirl climate change warrior: ‘Some people can let things go. I can’t’
• Protests And Purchasing Power Could Be Positive Tipping Points In Climate Change
• The Young Minds Solving Climate Change
• The Rise Of Students Against Climate Change
• Climate Strike: Greta Thunberg Calls For ‘System Change Not Climate Change’ – Here’s What That Could Look Like
• It’s Time For Climate Change Communicators To Listen To Social Science
• 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

ABC News - Michael Slezak | Stephen Long

Adani's Carmichael coal mine site in central Queensland in December 2018. (Twitter: Matthew Canavan) Key points:

• Documents showed Adani refused to accept key scientific findings and recommendations about its water management plans
• There were concerns the water plans could allow Adani's mine to breach conditions of its environmental approval
• Melissa Price has rejected suggestions pressure was placed on science agencies

Handwritten documents obtained by the ABC appear to directly contradict the Environment Minister Melissa Price that Adani "accepted in full" changes sought by scientists to limit the impact of its controversial Queensland coal mine.
Announcing her decision to approve Adani's water management plans for its Carmichael mine earlier this month, Ms Price said Adani "accepted in full" advice from the CSIRO and Geoscience Australia.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison also maintained the Government would "make all decisions based on the expert advice from ... Geoscience Australia and the CSIRO".
"We have always been following the advice of the scientists and we'll continue to do that," he said.
The advice was provided in a damning review in February of the company's plans.
But documents provided to the ABC showed Adani refused to accept key scientific findings and recommendations about its water management plans.
The ABC has obtained notes taken by three attendees of a phone hook up on April 5 involving senior officials from the Department of Environment and Energy and staff from Geoscience Australia.
The documents show the government science agency was concerned the water plans could allow Adani's mine to breach the conditions of its environment approval.
However, Adani would not accept the need for corrective action if that occurred.
The notes said that Adani refused to:

• acknowledge the scientists' key finding that the model Adani used to estimate the mine's impacts was not fit for purpose;
• accept that a new model could show that the mine's impacts would breach environmental approvals; and
• commit to corrective action if the new model showed greater impacts on the environment than Adani had claimed would occur.

A separate briefing note from the Department of Environment and Energy shows Adani also refused to consider scaling back its mining operation to minimise its impacts, despite being asked to do so.
The ABC requested the meeting notes under freedom of information (FOI) laws, but Geoscience Australia took the unusual step of releasing the documents immediately instead.
Planning Australia's biggest mine
Step through the key events in the planning of Australia's biggest mining project, the Carmichael coal mine in remote central Queensland.The briefing happened after the Department of Environment and Energy had already advised the Minister to approve the plans, which had been finalised the previous month.
One set of notes was taken by Geoscience Australia chief Dr James Johnson, another by head of environmental geoscience Dr Stuart Minchin, and the third by senior executive Dr Richard Blewett.
A handwritten note by Dr Blewett mentions concerns held by Jane Coram, the head of CSIRO's land and water division.
She complained the science agencies had "not seen the revised plan" set to be approved, and that they were expected to take the summary of it at "face value".
After the meeting, Ms Price published a statement announcing, "Geoscience Australia and the CSIRO have provided written assurances that these steps address their recommendations."
A spokesman for Ms Price said she was not present at the meeting.
"Decisions were made between the department officers, Geoscience Australia and the CSIRO on the proper scientific assessment of the issues and no other factor," the spokesman said.
But the notes show the scientific agencies were asked by the Minister's department to give formal assurances that Adani's commitments met their concerns in language acceptable to the Government.
"Gov[ernment] is keen for assurance," the notes taken by CEO of Geoscience Australia, James Johnson said."Ideal for gov[ernment]: letter from me to [Mr Finn Pratt] saying based on extensive briefing from [Department of Environment and Energy] on Adani addresses the concerns raised."
Fin Pratt is the head of the Department of Environment and Energy.
Infographic: James Johnson hand written notes of DoEE teleconf 5 April 2019 (Supplied) In his handwritten notes of the meeting, Mr Johnson said the Government was keen for an assurance "based on discussion briefing" from the department, but he scribbled that out and changed it to "based on extensive briefing".
The Minister subsequently published a letter from Mr Johnson to Mr Pratt saying: "Thank you for the extensive briefing ... Based on this briefing Geoscience Australia is of the view that Adani have addressed the issues and concerns raised in our recommendations."
Ms Price's spokesman told the ABC no pressure was placed on the science agencies.
"Any suggestion of pressure in that process is rejected in the strongest possible terms and is insulting to the integrity of the experts concerned," he said.Adani said in a statement it could not comment on the content of the documents.
"Adani was not privy to internal briefing documents or discussions that the Federal Department of Environment and Energy may have provided to Geoscience Australia and CSIRO, consequently we are unable to comment as to their contents."

'Advice to Adani that they refused'
The briefing notes listed in point form the "advice to Adani that they refused".
These included a recommendation Adani acknowledge their modelling "is not fit for purpose" and that a "new model could revise impacts [to be] greater than [what] has been approved".
"So told Adani — if new model shows greater impact than current model, they have to sort it out [with] corrective [actions]", the notes said.
"They refused."
Infographic: James Johnson hand written notes of DoEE teleconf 5 April 2019. (Supplied) Before the verbal briefing to Geoscience Australia, the Department Environment and Energy prepared a summary of Adani's response to concerns raised by Geoscience Australia and the CSIRO, which was provided to the two agencies.
The summary was published by the Department of Environment and Energy.
That document shows Adani declined to commit to a reduced mine plan, or to cutting back coal extraction, as suggested by the Department Environment and Energy in response to the damning report on its groundwater management model and plans by Geoscience Australia and the CSIRO.
It also shows Adani negotiated compromise outcomes in response to some of the scientists' concerns and rejected other measures that the two agencies sought.
There were gaps between what was included in that document and what was apparently outlined in the verbal briefing to Geoscience Australia staff.


The Adani mine has proven divisive. (ABC News)

The notes of the verbal briefing the department gave to the scientists said that Adani committed to a "maximum timetable of three months" for conducting an investigation if water use limits were triggered — a demand of both CSIRO and Geoscience Australia.
In fact, the response Adani formally agreed to is less watertight: "If the groundwater level thresholds exceedance is because of authorised mining activities, the investigation will be prioritised and, depending on the nature of the impact, completed within three months."Adani told the ABC it was not provided directly with the advice by CSIRO and Geoscience Australia until after the Government approved the plans. Instead it responded to summaries made by the Department of Environment and Energy.

Minister faced intense pressure to approve mine
Ms Price faced intense pressure from her own side of politics to approve Adani's water management plans before the federal election was called.
Queensland LNP Senator James McGrath warned he would publicly call for Ms Price's resignation unless she did the "right thing" by Adani, and Queensland's LNP executive condemned what it called her "delay" in approval.
In the wake of the Federal Government's sign-off on the water management plans, Adani is pressing the Queensland Government to complete a series of other, state-based approvals that are needed before mining can commence.
Melissa Price faced intense pressure from her own side of politics to approve Adani's water management plans. (AAP: Lukas Coch)When Ms Price announced that she had approved the water management plans — just one working day after CSIRO and Geoscience Australia were briefed on Adani's responses to their concerns — the Environment Minister said:
"I have accepted the scientific advice and therefore approved the groundwater management plans for the Carmichael Coal Mine and Rail Infrastructure project under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.
"Both CSIRO and Geoscience Australia have confirmed the revised plans meet strict scientific requirements."The Queensland Government is yet to approve construction as it seeks to protect a colony of black-throated finches around the mine site.
Even if construction is fully signed off, the project still requires more approvals to be granted from the Queensland and Commonwealth governments before coal can be dug out of the ground.
In an official statement to the ABC, a spokesperson for Geoscience Australia said it stood by their earlier statement that Adani's actions addressed the concerns raised in their technical advice.
"Adani did not acknowledge our advice that their groundwater model was not fit for purpose, and indicated they would not revise the model in the short term," the spokesperson said.
They said despite that, additional monitoring and mitigation Adani did agree to do satisfied their concerns.
Geoscience Australia said it was not pressured to provide the Government assurance.

Links

• Adani coal mine a step closer with Environment Minister endorsing groundwater approvals
• Adani confident Labor will honour environmental approvals for coal mine
• How a damning assessment got turned into approval for Adani's mine
• Nine at-risk Coalition seats concerned about climate change
• Adani's key water management plan is flawed and used some unverified data, CSIRO says

Fairfax - Peter Hannam | Cole Latimer

Jobs in large-scale solar farms tripled last financial year, overtaking the hydro sector for the first time, and helping to drive an overall expansion of employment in the renewable energy sector.
Data from the Australian Bureau of statistics shows the number of full-time equivalent jobs in the industry rose 28 per cent in 2017-18 from a year earlier. The total of 17,740 jobs was up about 60 per cent from its recent low in 2015-16.
Jobs surge in large-scale renewables: A solar farm near Swan Hill in north-west Victoria."We saw large scale solar projects - systems with an installed capacity of 100 kilowatts or greater - overtake hydroelectric power to become the second-largest creator of renewable jobs", accounting for a sixth of them, Jonathon Khoo, ABS's director for the centre of environmental and satellite accounts, said in a statement.

Rooftop solar photovoltaics continue to be the mainstay of jobs in the industry, making up just shy of half of them. Its share has dropped back from a peak of 74 per cent in direct renewable industry jobs in 2011-12 - as installations of panels break records almost on a monthly basis - as solar farms have grown even faster.The release of the jobs figures comes as one of the country's biggest banks, Westpac, said on Wednesday it would source all of its electricity from renewable energy by 2025.The bank's announcement included a 10-year plan to buy a quarter of the output of the Bomen Solar Farm near Wagga Wagga. Construction on the 120-megawatt plant is scheduled to begin this quarter, with power - enough to meet the needs of about 36,000 homes - to be supplied in about a year's time. It will cost around $180 million to build.
Gary Thursby, the bank's chief operating officer, said Westpac had long recognised that climate change was "one of the most significant issues set to impact the long-term prosperity of our
economy and way of life".
The tumbling price of renewable energy provided "a great opportunity" to transition away from fossil fuels in "a cost-effective way", he said.
Solar farm builder Renew Estate’s Simon Currie said solar farms are providing a boon for regional areas. “Projects like Bomen – in Wagga Wagga – are showing the way for the future, by using localised labour, and it paves the way for how the renewable workforce is used in the future,” Mr Currie said.


Solar farm jobs soared from 930 in 2016-17 to 2880 last year, topping hydro's 2020 jobs and 1890 employed in wind farm developments, the ABS said. Solar's jump made up almost half the extra jobs in the sector last year.
A wind farm near Ararat in western Victoria. Growth in large-scale renewables provided Victoria with a big jump in jobs. Credit: Ararat Wind FarmAll states reported an increase in jobs, with Victoria's employment in the sector rising the most in percentage terms, at 47 per cent, or 1020 additional jobs.
Queensland saw the next largest increase in proportional terms, rising 44 per cent, or 1550 jobs, while NSW added 950 jobs, for a 27 per cent addition last year.
According to ABS, about one in four homes deemed suitable for solar PV have them.
Queensland leads the way with 36 per cent, narrowly ahead of South Australia's 34 per cent rate.

According to the Clean Energy Council, the renewables sector employed 20,105 total jobs by the end of last year - taking into account another half year of rapid expansion in the industry.
Of those, rooftop solar jobs - which exclude some of the sales and general office staff counted by ABS - made up about a third of employment.
For large-scale wind and solar farms, some 10,851 jobs were in construction and 2987 were in operations and maintenance, the council said.
“With just 21 per cent of our electricity coming from renewables last year, the task of transforming our energy system is really just beginning," Darren Gladman, the council's Director of Smart Energy, said.
"The good news is that renewable energy and energy storage is now the cheapest, cleanest and most reliable form of electricity generation that can be built today," he said, adding the council backs a national target of at least 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030.

Links

• 'Blown away': rooftop solar PV installations surge by almost half
• The power generation method touted as the solution to carbon emissions
• Australian-designed solar panel firm looks to shake-up booming sector
• National grid has more immediate challenges than electric cars
• Coal power baron says electric vehicles an inevitability
• How to get the most out of your home solar panels
• Atlassian plans 'ambitious' shift to 100pc renewable energy by 2025
• 'High degree of acceptance': Wind farm commissioner received just 8 complaints last year
• Solar battery use to grow but many wait for 'financial tipping point'

Fairfax - Peter Hannam | Cole Latimer

Dozens of energy "stakeholders" shuffled into Boston Consulting Group's 41st floor Sydney eyrie on Friday to help the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) plot the future of the country's main power grid.
The workshop, closed to the public, had some tricky issues to discuss quite apart from this past week's political eruptions over federal Labor's plan to spur demand for electric vehicles (EVs).
Planning a way forward for the power sector is getting increasingly complex. Credit: James DaviesThat plan - attacked by the Coalition as threatening to "end the weekend" for owners of diesel-chugging SUVs - would potentially place new strains on the grid if not handled well.
But despite the tizz over Teslas, the power industry is facing far more immediate tests.
These include the challenges of absorbing the leap in supplies of renewable energy, particularly solar, and the prospect of more coal-fired plants suffering sudden failures. Not on AEMO's list, however, is any plan for a national grid that is compatible with Australia's Paris climate commitments.
Maintaining the National Electricity Market (NEM), the world's largest single grid, will always have its issues. These have been exacerbated by the rise of electrons flowing both ways, as renewables allow consumers to be both consumers and exporters of power.
Solar panels are continuing to go up on people's homes at a record rate - AEMO chief executive Audrey Zibelman says it is the equivalent of a new coal-fired power station a season - adding both opportunities and strains for network managers.

Too much of a good thing?
The grid appears to be having difficulty absorbing the boom in large-scale solar and wind farms, if AEMO's recent release of its draft Marginal Loss Factors (MLF) report is any guide. This assessment identified regions where supplies are overwhelming grid loads and recommended restraining generators at the edge of the grid through price and output curbs.
The 200-megawatt Silverton Wind Farm in far-western NSW has had the price it receives for its power cut to about 80¢ in the dollar for 2018-19, and the amount of power it is allowed to feed into the grid slashed to a quarter of its total capacity when the nearby Broken Hill solar plant is operating.
Across the border in Victoria, the price received by the 88MW Bannerton Solar Farm will drop from about 90¢ in the dollar to around 80¢ for the coming year.
"As more generation is connected to electrically weak areas of the network that are remote from the regional reference node, MLFs in these areas will continue to decline," AEMO said.
University of Melbourne energy researcher Dylan McConnell says the loss-factor changes are huge for some producers and "will affect their financing and risk profile".
"We've never had such a roll-out of distributed power," he says, adding it is "not necessarily a bad thing if it encouraged new generation to go where it's most valuable".
Coping with the closure in 2022 of AGL's Liddell coal-fired power plant in NSW is almost the only guaranteed change AEMO and the power industry can plan around.
Demand response, which has been debated for two decades, is also gathering traction, including several trials over the past summer when big users agreed to cut power usage to ease supply squeezes.

EV opportunities and costs
The collapsing price of energy storage - whether in the form of a home battery, mobile ones on EVs or grid-scale units - is opening up other challenges as well as opportunities.
A report last week by Evenergi attempted to forecast how the eventual acceleration of EV demand will play out, based on data from about 1600 participants in South Australia.
"Significant implications" for the power network were not expected to kick in until after 2025 - a time when electric vehicles and petrol or diesel ones reach price parity," it says.
EVs, "if managed correctly", could improve network asset use and improve cost outcomes for consumers, the authors stressed.
Against this optimism is the prospect that with poor management, grids will come under extra strain as increasing numbers of EV drivers charging their cars at the same time add to peak demand rather than reduce it.
"The greatest risk area for hotspots occurring in single locations are DC-rapid chargers in public carparks, DC-rapid highway chargers, pool vehicles locations and bus fleets," the authors found.
At least one major network operator working with AEMO on EVs is assuming a similar 2025 timeframe. A senior manager in demand management told the Herald and The Age it was "still early days yet”.
“There’s still plenty of capacity certainly in [our] network to manage demand for these EVs,” the manager says, adding that research will be needed beyond the “five-plus years before demand from EVs starts to make a difference".

Consumers in charge?
Grattan Institute energy director Tony Wood says EVs may be able to make a lot of electricity available for the grid.
"You can come home and plug your vehicle in and the network will see that the battery is 70 per cent full," he says. "If the demand for electricity is high it can harvest your power instead of charging your battery, charging it later in the night."
Bruce Mountain, head of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre at Victoria University, says the rapid development of new technology means that "a lower-cost energy awaits, not just in private transport but also energy use in the home".
Key to grasping the "fantastic" upside, though, will be regulators who put consumers at the forefront. "It's precisely to avoid vested interests setting the future pathway," Dr Mountain says.
Friday's workshop discussed adding an extra scenario to the four previously under consideration for AEMO's next Integrated System Plan to account for the industry meeting the Paris climate goals.
Participants - from generators to distributors and regulators - explored "brakes, barriers and borders" of a slow change to the grid. The most upbeat scenario was dubbed "we did it", and included "unquestioning support for net zero [emissions] by 2050". The most negative outlook included planning for "extreme climate change impacts", "populist nationalist governments" and even "war".

Links

• Australia's waking up': take-up of electric car charging points to market shift
• Coal power baron says electric vehicles an inevitability
• Road to nowhere: why Australia lags behind in electric vehicle revolution
• Electric Vehicles An Opportunity For Local Government
• 'Woefully Dirty': Government Accused Over Australia's Failure To Cut Vehicle Emissions
• How green are electric cars?
• 'They've done nothing': fuel emissions taskforce accused of 'apathy'
• Australia's annual carbon emissions reach record high
• Australia's annual emissions continue to rise, driven by LNG production
• Half of Australia's emissions increase linked to WA's Gorgon LNG plant
• Australian government backs coal in defiance of IPCC climate warning
• Australia's emissions rise again in 2017, putting Paris targets in doubt
• Australia's greenhouse gas emissions highest on record
• The eco guide to Electric Vehicle hype
• Queensland to build one of the world's longest electric vehicle highways

Fairfax - Nicole Hasham

A panel of government-appointed experts has uncovered "integrity issues" with the Coalition's flagship climate change policy, triggering a warning that some of the emission reductions claimed by Australia may not be genuine.
The findings relate to the Abbott-era Emissions Reduction Fund, established in 2014 to replace Labor's so-called "carbon tax". The Morrison government extended the fund in February with a $2 billion injection of taxpayer funds, and renamed it the Climate Solutions Fund.An official committee has raised concerns over carbon farming methods under the Emissions Reduction Fund. Photo: BloombergThe direct action initiative gives financial incentives, in the form of credits, to projects that reduce carbon emissions or draw them from the atmosphere, such as by revegetating land.An official panel of experts has identified "integrity issues" with two revegetation methods under the fund. Among the committee's findings are that some projects may have received credits for carbon sequestration that has not yet occurred and may never occur - for example, because the land is not capable of growing forest cover.
In one sample cited in the panel's report, almost half the projects had not achieved the required vegetation seven years after they commenced.The findings pose a concern because half the 193 million tonnes of emissions cuts claimed by the Coalition government under the fund relate to projects using one of the methods under a cloud.The Emissions Reduction Fund is the government's central tool for tackling climate change. Credit: Jessica Shapiro
The chair of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee, Australian National University law professor Andrew Macintosh, said there was no guarantee that all carbon credits issued to existing projects would accurately reflect the carbon abatement they achieved.The methods under review, known as carbon farming, involve changes to farming practices such as limiting cattle grazing and managing feral animals, to allow native plants to regrow. The plants draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it as carbon.Professor Macintosh said that the extent to which projects may have been forward-credited or over-credited could not yet be measured because some still had decades to run.He said forward-crediting posed one of the greatest material risks to the scheme. This occurs when carbon credits are issued for sequestration that has not yet occurred. If it never occurs - for example if vegetation grows slowly - credits may be wrongly issued.The government recently introduced changes to the scheme's guidelines. Professor Macintosh said the changes took a stricter approach to new projects than those that had already begun. This was because creating uncertainty in the rules might deter future participation in the scheme.Proponents of existing projects, and their investors, were also opposed to retrospective changes.Professor Macintosh said the changes ensured new projects were robust. However he said the government should have more flexibility, within reason, to change the rules for existing projects "to address integrity issues".Professor Macintosh said projects that required the vegetation to remain intact for only 25 years presented an "elevated" risk because they were less likely to catch up in the case of forward-crediting, in which case "there's an over crediting problem"."Can I sit here and say there is no chance that existing projects will be forward-credited or over-credited? No I can't. But we will just have to see how the projects perform over the next five or ten years," he said.He added that the scheme was designed so over-credited projects would in most cases be balanced out by under-credited projects.Australian Conservation Foundation chief executive Kelly O'Shanassy said the concerns identified in the review "aren't minor technical issues"."It is further evidence the Morrison Government's climate plan is riddled with holes and cannot be relied upon to do the heavy lifting to cut Australia's growing climate pollution," she said.Environment Melissa Price said the committee's concerns had been addressed. Credit: Alex EllinghausenEnvironment Minister Melissa Price said the committee raised concerns during the review process that have now been addressed."The report, and the changes that the government has already made to these methods, demonstrates the integrity of the Emissions Reduction Fund and its organisational and institutional arrangements," she said.Labor's climate change and energy spokesman Mark Butler said the party "has been critical of the ERF for years"."This is an ineffective policy that hasn't seen emissions fall, while costing taxpayers $2.5 billion," he said.Labor will dump the fund if it wins office, but will continue with carbon farming methods, including improving their robustness, he said.

Links

• Scott Morrison pledges $2 billion, 10-year boost to Direct Action fund in election climate pitch
• What Are Major Parties’ Climate Change Policies?
• Adaptation Is The Poor Cousin Of Climate Change Policy
• In Australia, Climate Policy Battles Are Endlessly Reheated
• Coalition's Climate Solutions Fund Must Last A Further Five Years
• Greens Set 2030 Cut-Off For Coal Exports And Coal-Fired Power Stations

The Conversation - Jake Whitehead

Nobuteru Taniguc drifting a Tesla Model S in Tokyo, Japan. MASUDA
Australian politicians, including Prime Minister Scott Morrison, have raised the question of electric vehicles’ capacity for “grunt”.
Now I’m by no means a “grunt” expert, but when it comes to performance, electric cars are far from lacking. In fact, Australian electric car owners have ranked performance as the top reason for their purchase choice.
The V8, fuel-guzzling, rev-heads, who are supposedly worried that electric cars mean they will be left driving around golf buggies, should first check out this drag race between a Tesla and a Holden V8 Supercar.

SPOILER ALERT:The Tesla wins, and by a fair amount.
CarAdvice.com: Tesla Model S v Holden V8 Supercar v Walkinshaw HSV GTS Drag Race.
Internal combustion engine vs electric motor
Internal combustion engines and electric motors are very different. In an internal combustion engine, as the name suggests, small amounts of fuel are mixed with air, and are exploded to drive a series of pistons. These pistons drive a crankshaft, which is then connected to a gearbox, and eventually the wheels.
This is a rather simplified overview, but there are literally hundreds of moving parts in a combustion engine. The engine must be “revved-up” to a high number of revolutions in order to reach peak efficiency. The gearbox attempts to keep the engine running close to this peak efficiency across a wide range of speeds.
All of this complexity leads to a significant amount of energy being lost, mostly through friction (heat). This is why combustion engine cars are very energy inefficient.
So how are electric motors different? Electric motors are actually pretty simple, consisting of a central rotor, typically connected to a single gear. The rotor is turned by a surrounding magnetic field, which is generated using electricity. The added benefit of this design is that it can operate in reverse, acting as a generator to charge the batteries while slowing down the vehicle (this is called regenerative braking).

On the other hand, the electric motor reacts instantly as soon as the accelerator is pushed. Given the minimal moving parts, electric motors are also highly reliable and require little to no maintenance. Their simplicity also means that almost no energy is lost in friction between moving parts, making them far more efficient than internal combustion engines.

Does simplicity translate to more or less grunt?
Combustion engines need to be “revved-up” to reach peak power and torque. Torque is a measure of how much rotational force can be produced, whereas power is a measure of how hard an engine has to work to produce the rotational force.
As shown below, the power and torque characteristics of a combustion engine means that although a conventional car might have a top capacity of 120 kW of power and 250 Newton metres of torque, this is only when the engine is running at high speeds.
Power and torque characteristics of a typical internal combustion engine. Victor BarretoIn contrast, an electric motor provides full torque from zero kilometres an hour, with a linear relationship between how fast the motor is spinning and the power required. These characteristics translate to a vehicle that is extremely fast at accelerating, with the ability to push you back into your seat.
Power and torque characteristics of a typical electric motor. Victor BarretoWhat about pulling power?
For over a decade electric motors have been used in mining trucks, sometimes with a capacity greater than 100 tonnes, due to their powerful, instant torque and ability to pull large loads at slow speeds.
While most of these vehicles have been diesel-hybrids, fully electric mining trucks are now being introduced due to their high power-to-weight ratio, low operating costs, and ability to use regenerative braking to - in some cases - fully recharge their batteries on each mine descent.
A 590 kW, 9,500 N.m electric mining dumper truck, known as the eDumper, uses 30 kWh to travel uphill (unloaded, and can regenerate 40 kWh of electricity when driving back downhill fully loaded. Andreas Sutter/eMining AGElectric motors are also increasingly being used in shipping, again because of their ability to push large loads. In Europe, a number of short-haul electric ships are currently in use. One example is the Tycho Brahe, a 111 metre-long, 8,414 tonne electric passenger and vehicle ferry that operates between Helsingborg, Sweden and Helsingør, Denmark.
Tycho Brahe - an electric vehicle and passenger ferry with 4,000 kWh of batteries. ForseaThe future of grunt
The global transition to electric vehicles is underway. Australians must decide whether we want to capture the enormous benefits this technology can bring, or remain a global laggard, literally being killed by our current vehicle emissions.
A Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle). Jake WhiteheadWhile long-distance towing in fully electric vehicles is currently a challenge, in the near future this will no longer be the case with the introduction of long-range electric utes like the Rivian R1T and Tesla Pickup.
In the interim, alternatives also exist, like my own plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. It can tow, drive on the beach, and drive up to 50 kilometres on electricity alone. Charged using my home solar system or The University of Queensland’s fast-charger, it means that more than 90% of my trips are zero-emission.
It is clear that electric cars can provide plenty of grunt for Australians, so let’s make sure we are ready for an electric performance future.

Links

• 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
• Stuck In First Gear: How Australia's Electric Car Revolution Stalled

The Conversation - Elsa Dominish | Nick Florin


Electric vehicles and renewable energy must mine more responsibly. Ioanac/Shutterstock Growing demand for electric vehicles is important to help cut transport emissions, but it will also lead to new mining. Without a careful approach, we could create new environmental damage while trying to solve an environmental problem.
Like solar panels, wind turbines and battery storage technologies, electric vehicles require a complex mix of metals, many of which have only been previously mined in small amounts.
These include cobalt, nickel and lithium for batteries used for electric vehicles and storage; rare earth metals for permanent magnets in electric vehicles and some wind turbines; and silver for solar panels.
Our new research (commissioned by Earthworks) at the Institute of Sustainable Futures found that under a 100% renewable energy scenario, demand for metals for electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies could exceed reserves for cobalt, lithium and nickel.
To ensure the transition to renewables does not increase the already significant environmental and human impacts of mining, greater rates of recycling and responsible sourcing are essential.

Greater uptake of electric vehicles will translate to more mining of metals such as cobalt. ShutterstockRecycling can offset demand for new mining
Electric vehicles are only a very small share of the global vehicle market, but their uptake is expected to accelerate rapidly as costs reduce. This global shift is the main driver of demand for lithium, cobalt and rare earths, which all have a big effect on the environment.
Although electric vehicles clearly help us by reducing transport emissions, the electric vehicle and battery industries face the urgent challenge of improving the environmental effects of their supply chains.
Our research shows recycling metals can significantly reduce primary demand for electric vehicle batteries. If 90% of cobalt from electric vehicle and energy storage batteries was recycled, for instance, the cumulative demand for cobalt would reduce by half by 2050.
So what happens to the supply when recycling can’t fully meet the demand? New mining is inevitable, particularly in the short term.
In fact, we are already seeing new mines linked to the increasing demand for renewable technologies.

Clean energy is not so clean
Without responsible management, greater clean energy uptake has the potential to create new environmental and social problems. Heavy metals, for instance, could contaminate water and agricultural soils, leading to health issues for surrounding communities and workers.
Most of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and around 20% of this is from artisanal and small-scale miners who work in dangerous conditions in hand-dug mines.
This includes an estimated 40,000 children under 15.
Rare earths processing requires large amounts of harmful chemicals and produces large volumes of solid waste, gas and wastewater, which have contaminated villages in China.
Copper mining has led to pollution of large areas through tailings dam failures, including in the US and Canada. A tailings dam is typically an earth-filled embankment dam used to store mining byproducts.

A tailings dam. Edvision/Shutterstock
When supply cannot be met by recycling, we argue companies should responsibly source these metals through verified certification schemes, such as the IRMA Standard for Responsible Mining.

What would a sustainable electric vehicle system look like?
A sustainable renewable energy and transport system would focus on improving practices for recycling and responsible sourcing.
Many electric vehicle and battery manufacturers have been proactively establishing recycling initiatives and investigating new options, such as reusing electric vehicle batteries as energy storage once they are no longer efficient enough for vehicles.
But there is still potential to improve recycling rates. Not all types of metals are currently being recovered in the recycling process. For example, often only higher value cobalt and nickel are recovered, whereas lithium and manganese are not.
And while electric vehicle manufacturers are beginning to engage in responsible sourcing, many are concerned about the ability to secure enough supply from responsibly sourced mines.
If the auto industry makes public commitments to responsible sourcing, it will have a flow-on effect. More mines would be encouraged to engage with responsible practices and certification schemes.
These responsible sourcing practices need to ensure they do not lead to unintended negative consequences, such as increasing poverty, by avoiding sourcing from countries with poorer governance.
Focusing on supporting responsible operations in these countries will have a better long-term impact than avoiding those nations altogether.

What does this mean for Australia?
The Australian government has committed to supporting industry in better managing batteries and solar panels at the end of their life.
But stronger policies will be needed to ensure reuse and recycling if the industry does not establish effective schemes on their own, and quickly.
Australia is already the largest supplier of lithium, but most of this is exported unprocessed to China. However, this may change as the battery industry expands.
For example, lithium processing facilities are under development in Western Australia. Mining company Lithium Australia already own a battery component manufacturer in Australia, and recently announced they acquired significant shares in battery recycling company Envirostream.
This could help to close the loop on battery materials and create more employment within the sector.

Human rights must not be sidelined
The renewable energy transition will only be sustainable if human rights are made a top priority in the communities where mining takes place and along the supply chain.
The makers of electric cars have the opportunity to lead these industries, driving change up the supply chain, and influence their suppliers to adopt responsible practices.
Governments and industry must also urgently invest in recycling and reuse schemes to ensure the valuable metals used in these technologies are recovered, so only what is necessary is mined.

Links

• Time for a global agreement on minerals to fuel the clean energy transition
• Politically charged: do you know where your batteries come from?
• Dirty deeds: how to stop Australian miners abroad being linked to death and destruction
• Treasure from trash: how mining waste can be mined a second time
• Charging ahead: how Australia is innovating in battery technology
• 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
• Stuck In First Gear: How Australia's Electric Car Revolution Stalled

The Guardian - Lauren Markham

The northern triangle of Central America, the largest source of asylum seekers crossing the US border, is deeply affected by environmental degradation
‘Comparing human beings to natural disasters is both lazy and dehumanizing.’ Photograph: Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images Media outlets and politicians routinely refer to the “flood” of Central American migrants, the “wave” of asylum seekers, the “deluge” of children, despite the fact that unauthorized migration across the US borders is at record lows in recent years.
Comparing human beings to natural disasters is both lazy and dehumanizing, but perhaps this tendency to lean on environmental language when describing migration is an unconscious acknowledgement of a deeper truth: much migration from Central America and, for that matter, around the world, is fueled by climate change.
Yes, today’s Central American migrants – most of them asylum seekers fearing for their lives – are fleeing gangs, deep economic instability (if not abject poverty), and either neglect or outright persecution at the hands of their government.
But these things are all complicated and further compounded by the fact that the northern triangle of Central America – a region comprising Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, and the largest sources of asylum seekers crossing our border in recent years – is deeply affected by environmental degradation and the impacts of a changing global climate.
‘Violence and environmental degradation are inextricably linked, and both lead to mass migration.’ Photograph: Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP/Getty Images The average temperature in Central America has increased by 0.5C since 1950; it is projected to rise another 1-2 degrees before 2050. This has a dramatic impact on weather patterns, on rainfall, on soil quality, on crops’ susceptibility to disease, and thus on farmers and local economies. Meanwhile, incidences of storms, floods and droughts on are the rise in the region. In coming years, according to the US Agency for International Development, countries in the northern triangle will see decreased rainfall and prolonged drought, writ large. In Honduras, rainfall will be sparse in areas where it is needed, yet in other areas, floods will increase by 60%. In Guatemala, the arid regions will creep further and further into current agricultural areas, leaving farmers out to dry. And El Salvador is projected to lose 10-28% of its coastline before the end of the century. How will all those people survive, and where will they go?
El Salvador is projected to lose 10-28% of its coastline before the end of the century. How will all those people survive, and where will they go?This September, I travelled to El Salvador to report on the impacts of the US government’s family separation policy. I’d been to El Salvador many times before, but never to the Jiquilisco Bay, a stunning, shimmering and once abundant peninsula populated by mangroves and fishing communities and uncountable species of marine life. It is also one that, like many places in El Salvador, and like many places in the world, is also imperiled by climate change. Rising sea levels are destroying the mangrove forests, the marine life that relies on them, and thus the fishermen who rely on that marine life to feed themselves and eke out a meager economy.
I met a man there named Arnovis Guidos Portillo, a 26-year-old single dad. Many people in his family were fishermen, but they were able to catch fewer and fewer fish. The country’s drought and devastating rainfall meant that the area’s farming economy, too, was suffering. The land was stressed, the ocean was stressed, and so were the people. Arnovis got into a scuffle one day at a soccer game, which placed him on a hitlist with a local gang. He had been working as a day laborer here and there, but the drought meant there was less work, and it was hard to find work that didn’t require crossing into rival gang territory. If he did, he would be killed. So he took his daughter north to the United States, where border patrol agents separated them for two months, locking them up in different states and with zero contact.
‘People really don’t want to leave their homes for the vast uncertainty of another land.’ Photograph: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images Violence and environmental degradation are inextricably linked, and both lead to mass migration. An unstable planet and ecosystem lends itself to an unstable society, to divisions, to economic insecurity, to human brutality. When someone’s home becomes less and less livable, they move elsewhere. Wouldn’t each and every one of us do the same?
This week, the New Yorker’s Jonathan Blitzer published a series of pieces about the impacts of climate change in the Guatemalan highlands, where farmers are struggling to grow crops that they have been farming there for centuries. “In most of the western highlands,” Blitzer wrote, “the question is no longer whether someone will emigrate but when.”
A few years ago, I reported from Guatemala’s dry corridor, several hours away from where Blitzer was reporting, where persistent drought had decimated the region’s agriculture, and particularly the coffee crop, on which roughly 90% of local farmers relied. It was a wildly different landscape from the one Blitzer described, but it faced the same problem: if you live in an agricultural zone, come from a long line of farmers and can’t reliably harvest your crops any more, what else is there to do but leave?
If you live in an agricultural zone, come from a long line of farmers and can’t reliably harvest your crops any more, what else is there to do but leave?It’s abundantly clear that climate change is a driver of migration to the US – we have the data, we have the facts, we have the human stories. Still, the Trump administration has done nothing to intervene in this root cause. In fact, the US government has systematically denied the existence of climate change, rolled back domestic regulations that would mitigate US carbon emissions and thumbed its nose at international attempts – such as the Paris accords – to curb global warming.
Now, in his latest futile, small-minded and cruel attempt to cut migration off at the neck (something we know is not possible – an unhealthy societal dynamic must be addressed at the root, just like with a struggling tree or crop), Donald Trump announced last week that he would cut all foreign aid to the northern triangle. It’s a punitive move, and one that – just like building a wall, separating families, locking people up indefinitely, and refusing asylum seekers entry across the border – is a petty intimidation tactic that will do nothing to actually curb forced migration.
In fact, cutting aid to Central America will do quite the opposite, for as much waste and imperfections as there are in international aid, aid in Central America has been vital for creating community safety programs, job skills development and government accountability standards. It has also helped with drought mitigation and supporting climate-resilient agricultural practices. In other words, foreign aid to Central America – a place unduly hit by climate change – is supporting the kind of climate change resiliency that will keep people from having to leave in the first place.
Because people really don’t want to leave their homes for the vast uncertainty of another land, particularly when that land proves itself again and again to be hostile to migrants’ very existence. People don’t want to be raped along the route north, or die in the desert, or have their child ripped away from them by the border patrol, or be locked up indefinitely without legal counsel, without adequate medical care, with no idea what will happen to them and when. Who would risk this if things were OK back home? People like Arnovis leave because they feel like they have to.
Eventually Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials convinced Arnovis to sign deportation papers with the promise that, if he did, he would be reunited with his daughter and returned to El Salvador. But he was shooed on to a plane back home without her. It took a tremendous amount of advocacy, but, after months locked up in the US, she, too was returned home. They are now back together, which is a good thing, but the fundamental problem hasn’t changed: he can’t find work. His society is ill. So is the planet, and the land and sea all around him.
Today, there are 64 million forced migrants around the world, more than ever before. They are fleeing war, persecution, disaster and, yes, climate change. The UN estimates that by 2050, there will be 200 million people forcibly displaced from their homes due to climate change alone.
Migration is a natural human phenomenon and, many argue, should be a fundamental right, but forced migration – being run out of home against one’s will and with threat to one’s life – is not natural at all. Today, whether we choose to see it or not, climate change is one of the largest drivers of migration, and will continue to be for years to come – unless we do something about it. If we want people to be able to stay in their homes, we have to tackle the issue of our changing global climate, and we have to do it fast.

Links

• Climate Change: Global Impacts 'Accelerating' - WMO
• Climate Change Creates A New Migration Crisis For Bangladesh
• Climate Gentrification: The Rich Can Afford To Move – What About The Poor?
• Climate Change Must Be Dealt With Before It Unleashes Millions Of Global-Warming Refugees
• Climate Change Could Affect Human Evolution. Here's How.
• Rising Seas Will Displace Millions Of People – And Australia Must Be Ready
• We Are All Climate Refugees Now
• A Warming World Creates Desperate People
• The Refugees The World Barely Pays Attention To
• A Storm Of Climate Change Migration Is Brewing In South Asia
• Number Of African Migrants Will Double By 2050 And Climate Change Will Make It Worse

New York Times - Nathaniel Rich*

Fixing the planet is going to be expensive. Can we stomach the bill for human survival?
In Bangladesh, the effects of climate change are happening now: It may lose more than 10 percent of its land to sea-level rise within a few decades. Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times The world’s most difficult problem has a solution so simple that it can be expressed in four words: Stop burning greenhouse gases. How exactly to pull this off is somewhat more complicated — just not as complicated as most Americans have been led to believe. As James Hansen, the don of modern climate science, told me last year, “From a technology and economics standpoint, it is still readily possible to stay under two degrees Celsius.” Readily possible.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report from last October, which provoked widespread terror, echoed this conclusion. Keeping warming to 1.5 degrees above historical averages was possible, it found, provided we immediately began to eliminate carbon-dioxide emissions. This was terrifying only because we have not begun to do any such thing.
Most zero-emissions plans — “road maps,” in bureaucratese, or “pathways,” per the I.P.C.C. — propose some combination of the following elements: carbon taxes, effectual international treaties, increased subsidization of renewable energy, decreased subsidization of fossil fuels, nuclear energy, reforestation, land-use reform and investments in energy efficiency, energy storage and carbon-capture technology. But when it comes to drafting actual laws to achieve these policies, to quote the Heritage Foundation fellow Nick Loris, “the devil’s in the details.”
The Heritage Foundation ought to know; for decades, it has demonstrated mastery of the dark arts of climate-change denialism. This strain of influence peddling would be harmful enough had it managed merely to deepen the public ignorance about global warming. But denialism has had devastating downstream effects (to borrow an industry term). It has managed to defer meaningful consideration of nearly every urgent policy question that now awaits us, if we are serious about trying to stop this.
The most fundamental question is whether a capitalistic society is capable of sharply reducing carbon emissions. Will a radical realignment of our economy require a radical realignment of our political system — within the next few years? Even if the answer is no, we have some decisions to make. How, for instance, should the proceeds of a carbon tax be directed? Should they be used to finance clean-energy projects, be paid out directly to taxpayers or accrue to the national budget? In a healthy democracy, you could expect a rigorous public debate on this question. But such a debate has rarely surfaced in the United States because, as of this writing, only a handful of Republican members of the House of Representatives, out of a caucus of 197, have endorsed the basic concept of a carbon tax — an idea that has its roots in conservative economic thought.
And what should be done, if anything, about the people who lose their jobs once coal plants, whether because of market pressures or federal mandate, are forced to close? Should unemployed coal miners be retrained as wind farmers, receive unemployment checks or be abandoned to their plight? You could imagine a robust political debate about this issue as well — perhaps with the right in favor of letting miners fend for themselves and the left supporting a federal welfare program — were such questions allowed to be debated.
What should be done for the far greater number of people in poor and neglected communities, both in the United States and abroad, that stand to suffer most grievously from a hotter climate in the years ahead? What penalties should Exxon and the other major oil and gas companies suffer for their sins? What branch of government should impose those penalties, and should criminal liability be extended to individual lobbyists and chief executives? Should old, declining nuclear plants be preserved, and should new, smaller plants be commissioned, and who ought to make such decisions? How much federal funding should be invested in researching speculative geoengineering or carbon-capture technologies? Should insurance rates in coastal regions be increased abruptly to reflect the actual threat of sea-level rise, or phased in gradually? What sanctions should be imposed on foreign nations that fail to comply with the terms of global climate treaties? On these and many other such questions, reasonable minds might disagree. But beyond the reaches of the scholarly and activist literature, reasonable minds have not been given the opportunity.
It has become commonplace to observe that corporations behave like psychopaths. They are self-interested to the point of violence, possess a vibrant disregard for laws and social mores, have an indifference to the rights of others and fail to feel remorse. A psychopath gains a person’s trust, mimics emotions but feels nothing and passes in public for human (with a charming Twitter feed, say). The psychopath is calm, calculated, scrupulous — never more so than while plotting murder. There can be no reasoning with a psychopath; neither rational argument nor blandishment has a remote chance of success. If this indeed is the pathology that we are dealing with when it comes to the climate impasse, then we should be honest about the appropriate course of treatment. Coercion must be the remedy — exerted economically, politically and morally, preferably all at once. The psychopath respects only force.

*Nathaniel Rich is the author of the new book “Losing Earth: A Recent History,” based on an article that appeared in this magazine.

Links

• How Big Business Is Hedging Against the Apocalypse
• The Problem With Putting a Price on the End of the World
• Climate Change Could Destroy His Home in Peru. So He Sued an Energy Company in Germany.
• David Leonhardt on the economics of climate change.
• What survival looks like in Bangladesh after the oceans rise
• Climate Change Threatens Millions Of Bangladeshi Children, Warns UNICEF
• Climate Change Creates A New Migration Crisis For Bangladesh
• Climate Chaos Is Coming — and the Pinkertons Are Ready

Cosmos - Richard A. Lovett

Scientists see consumer action as a potential driver for planet-saving strategies. Richard A Lovett reports.
Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg (R) and German climate activist Luisa Neubauer (L) at a student-led climate change rally in Berlin in March 2019. Carsten Koall/Getty ImagesOften, the news relating to climate change is unrelentingly bleak. The world appears to be hurtling toward a climate-warmed future riddled with hurricanes, floods, droughts, famines, heat waves, forest fires, rising sea levels, and vanishing ice caps.
But just as natural systems appear to have “tipping points” in which positive feedbacks can accelerate the rush toward such disasters, it may be that human socio-economic systems may also have tipping points that can help ward them off.
In the natural world, these points include factors such as the loss of sunlight-reflecting snow and ice, or the release of planet-warming methane gas from melting permafrost, both of which can accelerate the rate of global warming.
In the socio-economic world, “good” tipping points would be ones that might induce corporations and individuals to rapidly increase activities that help prevent climate change, even if political institutions are still dragging their feet.
“It’s one of the few positive stories [in the field],” says Matthew Ives, a systems modeller at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the University of Oxford, UK, and coauthor of a paper in the journal Science.
He compares it to the famous butterfly effect in chaos theory, in which a small change to a sensitive part of a complex system “can have outsized results, thanks to feedback dynamics”.
It works, he says, by shifting the focus from traditional, ineffective, approaches such as the Paris Agreement, to “sensitive intervention points,” in which seemingly simple tweaks in socio-economic, technological, and political systems can self-amplify into radical change.
One way in which this can be done, he explains, is by requiring corporations, especially those with fossil fuel assets, to fully disclose to investors the financial risks they face from global warming and the implications of a possible shift away from fossil fuels. “That is a critical system that is on a tipping point that, if not tomorrow, [is] not far into the future,” Ives says, “because there is a huge risk in the way they do their accounting.”
These companies’ stock prices, he says, are highly dependent on the future price of oil. If consumers shift to alternative forms of energy, and fossil-fuel prices fall, it would drive down their stocks, shifting investment dollars elsewhere, including to alternative-energy producers.
In 2017, he says, one oil company looked at this risk and concluded that a mere 10% cut in its anticipated future oil prices, from $80 to $72 per barrel, would cut profits in half.
“What happens if we get [prices] from $20 to $40?” Ives asks. “It’s going to wipe all the income off the balance sheet.”
Meanwhile, he says, prices of renewable energy have been steadily declining. So who cares if US President Donald Trump hates wind farms? Alternative energy costs have still been steadily decreasing.
Photovoltaics, for example, have been decreasing in price by about 10% per year since 1990. Now, Ives says, “we are around where they are on parity with fossil fuels”.
Once alternative energy sources get past the tipping point where they are actually cheaper than fossil fuels, Ives argues, this will lead to a massive devaluation in the latter and a rapid shift to the former.
The stock market, he adds, may also amplify this effect.
“As soon as one stock starts getting re-evaluated,” he says, “then all of them start getting re-evaluated. Once a buyer sees a major investor pulling out [of fossil-fuel-dependent stocks], and others start doing the same, that has a cascading effect.”
A similar bandwagon effect may also apply at the consumer level. If one person buys a solar panel and puts it on their roof, others see it, and may decide to buy their own.
From a socio-economic perspective, adds Ives, it may mean that creating incentives for consumers to buy solar panels may be more effective than encouraging them to invest in other energy-saving technologies, such as better insulation. “People don’t see insulation,” he says.
Political campaigns can also have outsized results.
In the US, a group of students in Oregon have sued the federal government, arguing that they have a constitutionally protected “life, liberty, and property” right to a sustainable climate. So far, their lawsuit has survived two challenges, all the way to the Supreme Court.
In Europe, a 16-year-old student named Greta Thunberg has become an international celebrity, speaking to the United Nations and leading anti-climate-change rallies far from her native Sweden, partly because of another positive feedback mechanism: the amplifying effect of the internet and social media.
“Suddenly, you’ve got people around the world protesting, based on the inspiration of this one, 16-year-old girl,” Ives says. “That’s a perfect example of these feedback dynamics.”Marc Hafstead, an economist at Resources for the Future in Washington, DC, and director of its Carbon Pricing Initiative, who was not part of the study team, agrees with the “tipping point” concept.
“Even with the Paris Agreement,” he says, “we are falling short. I think it’s good to ask how we can tip the system to try to get more change and get on track to where we need to be.”
That said, he cautions against focusing too strongly on trying to tip the scales on individual alternative-energy technologies.
“The technologies we pick today might not be the technologies for 10 years from now,” he warns.
However, he likes the idea of political motivation as a tipping point.
“We need public support for the types of policies that are going to be necessary,” he says.
“Whether it’s [through] more young people voting, or more awareness through storms and droughts — the cost of climate hitting us in the face — we need some type of change to our political system to get the policies in place.”
In the US, he adds, one such political tipping point might come via Republican members of Congress.
From what he has been told, many of them are not, behind closed doors, nearly as opposed to climate control policies as they appear to be in public.
“They need a tipping-point moment to come out in a group and feel like they have political cover,” he suggests.
Richard Alley, a Nobel-laureate climate-change researcher at Pennsylvania State University, also finds the new study fascinating and probably important.
Previous work, he says, has looked at societal tipping points going in “bad” ways.
The idea that there might be ones that could help protect the climate, he says, therefore seems likely “to be [both] useful and valuable.”

Links

• Sensitive intervention points in the post-carbon transition
• Earth may soon become “inhospitable to current human societies”
• Scientists warn on Antarctic ice shelf vulnerability
• Captured carbon could convert to chemical feedstock 
• Cool roofs reduce urban heat; green ones, not so much 
• Adding iron to oceans could increase carbon storage 
• Thawing permafrost is triggering landslides across the Arctic 
• Carbon dioxide dip propelled longer glaciation cycles 
• Barrier Reef baby coral numbers crash 
• From the Himalayas to the Arctic, traditional herders are sharing knowledge to cope with a changing climate 
• Hydro power can generate more carbon dioxide than it saves

Forbes - James Ellsmoor

Key Points

• In the face of rising global emissions, intensified electrification and an increase in renewable energy could make the difference that ensures we reach future climate goals
• The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) recommends that nations take more aggressive actions to ensure a quick and effective transition away from fossil fuels.

In the face of rising global emissions, intensified electrification and an increase in renewable energy could make the difference that ensures we reach future climate goals.
With development and energy demands soaring worldwide, there is an opportunity for clean, renewable energy to supplant fossil fuels and take over as the main form of electricity generation.
New findings published by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) have emphasized the need to scale up efforts to transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy.
The Global Energy Transformation: A Roadmap to 2050 outlines how the world can successfully implement large-scale renewable programs that will not only help reduce carbon emissions but improve global socioeconomic development.
A demonstrator is detained for sitting in the road at Oxford Circus in London, Friday, April 12, 2019. Young protestors took to the streets after a government report has revealed that the nation is set to miss its emissions targets. ASSOCIATED PRESSThe analysis provided by IRENA shows that global energy demands are expected to double by 2050, and that 86% of global electrical needs could be met by renewable energy within that same timeframe. A large scale up from current levels, the extra energy load would be carried mostly by wind and solar installations.

Barriers To Change
Despite the optimistic outlook, IRENA warns that more needs to be done in order to reach the goal they anticipated. IRENA’s Director-General Francesco La Camera explains that, “The energy transformation is gaining momentum, but it must accelerate even faster, The UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and the review of national climate pledges under the Paris Agreement are milestones for raising the level of ambition. Urgent action on the ground at all levels is vital, in particular unlocking the investments needed to further strengthen the momentum of this energy transformation. Speed and forward-looking leadership will be critical – the world in 2050 depends on the energy decisions we take today.”
Donald Trump says he is imposing new tariffs to "protect American jobs and American workers." Trump acted to impose new tariffs on imported solar-energy components and large washing machines in a bid to help U.S. manufacturers. ASSOCIATED PRESSWhilst the push for renewable energy certainly has its benefits, there remains a wide range of obstacles in the way of their large-scale development and implementation. For example, the past two years have seen the United States’ solar industry lose momentum over President Donald Trump’s tariffs, whilst lawmakers in Australia are failing to adhere to the nation’s COP21 emissions reduction goals and have continued on with their plans to open the world’s largest open-air coal mine despite widespread public condemnation. These political setbacks are relatively widespread and have been reducing the ability of the renewable energy sector to efficiently evolve and develop, and could have a lasting impact on global emissions.

A Time For Action
IRENA’s report has noted that transitions have been slow and that current rates of emission reduction are not in line with global climate goals. The report recommends that nations take more aggressive actions to ensure a quick and effective transition away from fossil fuels that will help reach the previously agreed-upon goals and ensure that mitigation of climate change remains a priority. In order to do so, IRENA advocates for stronger national policy focusing on long-term zero-carbon strategies as well as promoting innovation in the fields of renewable energy, technology and smart-grids.
Commenting on the report’s findings, La Camera said that “The race to secure a climate safe future has entered a decisive phase. Renewable energy is the most effective and readily-available solution for reversing the trend of rising CO2 emissions. A combination of renewable energy with deeper electrification can achieve 75% of the energy-related emission reduction needed.” What La Camera is describing has already happened in many places worldwide - many islands have been leading the charge in renewable energy transitions, and are becoming incubators for energy innovation.

Race Against The Clock
The benefits stemming from embracing clean, renewable energy go a lot farther than just reducing pollution and carbon emissions. IRENA has illustrated the risks of a slow transition, and every year that carbon emissions increase is another year that negatively affects the environment, social welfare, and the wider economy. Likewise, IRENA has also been quick to point out the knock-on effects of a renewable energy transition in its report, outlining how a rapid transition could save the global economy US$160 trillion in costs associated with climate change.
A chinstrap penguin walks past the Quito Glacier near Ecuador's Pedro Vicente Maldonado Research Station on Greenwich Island, Antarctica, which conducts research, develop sscientific exploration and to documents the environmental impacts on glaciers, flora and fauna in the region.“The shift towards renewables makes economic sense,” emphasizes La Camera. “By mid-century, the global economy would be larger, and jobs created in the energy sector would boost global employment by 0.2%. Policies to promote a just, fair and inclusive transition could maximize the benefits for different countries, regions and communities. This would also accelerate the achievement of affordable and universal energy access. The global energy transformation goes beyond a transformation of the energy sector. It is a transformation of our economies and societies.”
With time of the essence as nations grapple to reduce the current and future effects of climate change, IRENA’s report punctuates the emergency of the situation - but also how beneficial an efficient transition away from fossil fuels will be for the economy.

Links

• Global energy transformation: A roadmap to 2050 (2019 edition)
• 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
• 10 Hot Trends Shaping Australian Clean Energy
• Australia Could Hit 100% Renewables Sooner Than Most People Think
• The European Union Is Helping These Islands To Go Renewable
• Under Trump's Tariffs, The US Lost 20,000 Solar Energy Jobs
• Puerto Rico Has Just Passed Its Own Green New Deal

The Guardian - Lisa Cox

Transition to electric vehicles to cut carbon emissions has dominated climate policy debate in the Australian election campaign
Bill Shorten charges an electric car after launching Labor’s climate change action plan. A car manufacturer has called for an end to Coalition ‘fear-mongering’ over electric vehicles. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAPOne in two Australians would support shifting all sales of new cars to electric vehicles by 2025, according to polling by the Australia Institute.
The progressive thinktank surveyed a nationally representative sample 0f 1,536 Australians about their attitudes to electric vehicles. It found support was similar across all states and territories, including 52% in Victoria and Western Australia, 49% in Queensland and 48% in New South Wales.
Twenty-eight per cent of those surveyed were opposed to the idea.
The poll was conducted online between 20 February and 4 March, with representative samples by gender, age and state and territory.
Release of the polling comes at the end of a week in which the transition to electric vehicles in order to cut Australia’s carbon emissions from transport, which make up 19% of all emissions, has dominated debate about climate policy before the election.


Federal election week one roundup: Coalition short-circuits over electric cars.
Carmakers have signalled they are making the shift, with Hyundai Motor Group calling for an end to “fear-mongering” over new vehicle technologies.
On Friday, the independent senator Tim Storer, who chaired a Senate committee inquiry into electric vehicles, said he was “deeply concerned” by what he saw as an anti-technology scare campaign being run by some within the government and the media.
“It is akin to someone in 1990 arguing mobile phones were not going to take off. It flies in the face of fact, and the public should not buy it.”
Several countries have already announced they will ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars in coming years, including Norway, the Netherlands, India, Ireland, Israel, the UK, France, Spain and China.
In the Australia Institute’s poll, more than half of Labor voters (56%) supported the idea that 100% of new vehicle sales be electric by 2025, and 65% of Greens voters.
Forty-two per cent of Coalition voters were in favour, versus 38% who were opposed, with the remainder unsure.
Respondents were also asked if they would support or oppose a national program to switch to an electrically charged transport system, including public transport.
Overall, 62% supported this idea, including 55% of Coalition voters, 71% of Labor voters, 78% of Greens voters and 54% of those who vote for other parties or independents. Some of the strongest support for this idea was among Queensland (62%) and Western Australia (68%) respondents.
“Australians already have a strong appetite for electric vehicles, with 50% interested in purchasing an electric vehicle by 2025 – a full five years earlier than Labor’s EV target and significantly faster than the government’s strategy” Richie Merzian, the climate and energy program director at the Australia Institute, said.
“Australia Institute research shows that Australians across all parties support a national electric vehicle policy – all that’s missing is policy leadership.”
The major parties have clashed over electric vehicle policy this week, with the prime minister, Scott Morrison, criticising Labor’s target for 50% of new vehicles to be electric by 2030.
He later backtracked to say the issue “isn’t about electric cars, this is about the fact that Bill Shorten can’t explain what his policies mean to Australians”.
Australia lags behind most other OECD countries in implementing clear emissions policies for transport.
Hyundai said this week the next government needed a clear policy on vehicles, including vehicle emissions standards that have driven the switch to EVs in the northern hemisphere.
Merzian said Australia could also look to countries such as Norway, which has introduced incentives such as making electric vehicles exempt from sales tax, waiving fees for road tolls and parking, and providing rebates on registration of electric vehicles.
Merzian said such targets only seemed out of reach for Australia because the country was so far behind in policy and infrastructure.
“Instead of driving Australia backwards by preserving our gas-guzzlers, any future government should look to the fine example of countries like Norway who already reached 50% of new car registrations as EVs in 2018 by using popular public incentives to accelerate electric vehicle uptake,” he said.

Links

• Toyota distances itself from Liberal ads falsely claiming Labor wants to tax cars
• How green are electric cars?
• Hyundai warns of 'fear-mongering' over electric cars in Australia election
• Electric cars 'will be cheaper than conventional vehicles by 2022'
• Electric cars: separating the facts from the propaganda
• Greens electric car push: end sale of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030
• No big freeze in electric vehicles
• The eco guide to electric vehicles
• China makes new electric cars tax-free

National Geographic - Angela Heathcote

These doctors join in a chorus of outcries about climate change from some of the country’s most respected professions.
Queensland floods.IMAGE CREDIT: Kathie Nichols/ShutterstockWITH MORE bushfires, floods and other natural disasters predicted for Australia’s future, some Australian doctors say the country’s health system is unprepared for the fallout.
Today, doctors and public health experts published an article in the Medical Journal of Australia, the official journal of the Australian Medical Association (AMA), calling for a more resilient health system, recommending three fundamental changes.

• A whole-of-system approach, integrating all elements of population health and health care throughout the continuum of preparedness, response, and recovery.
• Improve the timeliness of surveillance as current disease notification systems are slow.
• Determine the standards of care relevant to particular situations.

Dr Gerard J. Fitzgerald, from QUT’s School of Public Health and Social Work, Professor Anthony Capon from the University of Sydney and psychiatrist Dr Peter Aitken of Queensland Health says that natural disasters of the 2018-19 summer made it clear that the health system has to be strengthened.
Dr Fitzgerald believes that the medical profession understands climate change and the impacts it may pose to the health system.
“The vast majority understand climate change and its impacts on the health profession. Doctors are scientifically trained. Anyone scientifically trained gets it. But there’s need for awareness about its impacts on the health system.”
The article was published in advance of the 21st biennial congress of the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WADEM), which will be held in Brisbane in May.

How will climate change affect the health of Australians?
According to the researchers, the health threats presented by climate change will vary according to geographic location.
“The rise in temperatures will not be consistent across the planet, and may increase or reduce local rainfall, depending on other factors,” they write.
“The effects of climate change will also vary regionally as individuals and societies adapt behaviourally, structurally, and physiologically.”
The primary threats, specifically caused by rising temperatures include heat stress, hyperpyrexia and heat stroke, and indirectly through their impact on individuals with
chronic cardiovascular, respiratory and renal diseases or mental health problems.
Rising temperatures also has been shown to change the distributions of allergens and pathogens and their vectors.
“These effects can be moderated by adaptive strategies but exacerbated by other factors, such as pollution and humidity, as well as by dehydration, exercise, and infectious diseases and other health conditions,” they say.

Mental health impacts
According to Dr Fitzgerald, the medical profession has to increase its awareness of not just the direct impacts of natural disasters, but also the indirect impacts.
“If you think of a disaster, such as a cyclone or flood, there are people directly affected. The directly affected are those who might drown in a flood or are injured by a falling building during a cyclone.
“The indirect effects are less obvious. There are mental health consequences if someone loses their home or a loved one. What’s even more stressful is fighting with insurance companies three years after the event. They’re battling with questions such as where to live or what they’re going to do with the kids.”
Those most adversely affected by the indirect and direct impacts of climate change, Dr Fitzgerald says, are people of poorer communities.
“It’s too late to reverse climate change so now we have to adapt. The people who have the economic power to adapt will cope better. People who can’t afford that are the people at greater risk from heat waves and other natural disasters.
“People living in low lying easily flooded areas such as those in Queensland, where property is cheap, hits poorer populations. Natural disasters are well known to affect poorer populations.”

The recommendations
One of the three recommendations put forward in article is “a whole-of-system and comprehensive approach” to help the Australian health system prepare for climate-related disasters and emergencies, according to Dr Fitzgerald.
“Identifying immediate direct effects (injuries and deaths) is relatively straightforward but longer term impacts and indirect health consequences are less clear,” he says.
“For example Hurricane Maria killed 64 people in Puerto Rico in 2017 but the estimated all-cause increased mortality for the following three months was 4645.”
The example of Hurricane Maria prompted the researchers to advocate for a whole-of-system approach that starts with preparedness through to recovery.
The second recommendation requires an improvement in disease notification systems, which currently rely on individuals recognising and reporting emerging problems, according to the researchers.
“Enhanced real time surveillance of ambulance, emergency department and hospital capacities and of patterns of demand should enable more timely recognition of new problems and increase the response capability of the health system,” they write.
Lastly, they say the standards of care relevant to particular situations need to be determined. “In extreme events, this includes sympathetic care for people who cannot be saved,” the paper reads.
“Every day 22,000 people attend hospital emergency departments in Australia – we have never had an event with 22,000 casualties,” says Dr Fitzgerald. “We need to have scalable arrangements which can deal with the full range of challenges from the routine to the totally unexpected using standardised policies and procedures.”

Doctors, lawyers and firefighters raising their voices
The doctors behind this most recent paper join a slew of outcries concerning Australia’s lack of preparedness for the impacts of climate change from some of the country’s most respected professions.
Last week, 20 former fire and emergency chiefs warned Australia is unprepared for the impacts of climate change, asking for more “national firefighting assets.”
The second-longest serving fire and rescue commissioner in New South Wales Greg Mullins, who is now a councillor with the Climate Council, said he could no longer predict the seasons.
“I started firefighting in 1971 and the bushfire seasons were extremely predictable.
“You knew when there was a bad season coming because there was an El Nino and drought. In the 90s, I stopped being able to predict it.”
Dr Fitzgerald will speak at the 21st World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine congress on disaster preparedness.

Links

• Australian Doctors Declare A Climate Emergency
• Why Fear And Anger Are Rational Responses To Climate Change
• Climate Change Will Expose Half Of World’s Population To Disease-Spreading Mosquitoes By 2050
• Climate Change And The Risk To Civilisation: The Doctors' Prescription
• Save Millions Of Lives By Tackling Climate Change, Says WHO
• The Climate Apocalypse Is Now, And It’s Happening To You
• Climate Change Already A Health Emergency, Say Experts
• Climate Change Threatens Our Children's Health As Well As Their Future
• 'Scandal': NSW Coal Power Plants Will Kill Thousands Before They Close
• African Islands Call For Help As Climate Change Worsens Health

PBS NewsHour - William Brangham | Emily Carpeaux | Mike Fritz

The frozen continent of Antarctica contains the vast majority of all freshwater on Earth. Now that ice is melting at an accelerating rate, in part because of climate change. What does this transformation mean for coastal communities across the globe? William Brangham reports from Antarctica on the troubling trend of ice loss and how glaciers can serve as a climate record from the past.



TRANSCRIPT

• Judy Woodruff:
  We continue now with our series from Antarctica.
  The ice-covered continent is being transformed in part by climate change. Antarctica's ice, which contains the vast majority of freshwater on Earth, is melting at an accelerating rate.
  William Brangham and producers Mike Fritz and Emily Carpeaux traveled there and have this report on how coastal communities all over the world could be impacted.
  It's part of our occasional series of reports, Peril and Promise: The Challenge of Climate Change.
  
• William Brangham:
  For as far as the eye can see, Antarctica is covered by thick sheets of ice. In some places, that ice is several miles deep.
  This massive continent, as big as the U.S. and Mexico combined, has, for millions of years, been home to some of the most breathtaking landscapes of ice on the planet.
  What you can see behind me here is a very good cross-section of a glacier in Antarctica. And what you can see, with all those different layers that is hundreds and thousands of years of snowfall and precipitation stacking up, one on top of the other, and slowly exerting pressure downward on those layers of snow. And that's basically how a glacier is formed.
  But Antarctica's ice is now increasingly being threatened, and most researchers believe it's because of climate change. According to one recent study, the continent's ice is slipping away six times faster than it was 40 years ago.
  
• Joseph  MacGregor:
  And Antarctica is now losing 252 gigatons of ice per year.
  
• William Brangham:
  Glaciologist Joe MacGregor is part of the team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center that's studying Antarctica's ice.
  Using radar and lasers, they measure the thickness of the ice, how it's moving, and whether it's growing or shrinking.
  This animation they built shows a sped-up version of how the ice flows on the continent.
  Help me understand what that means, 252 gigatons.
  
• Joseph  MacGregor:
  A gigaton is a billion metric tons of ice. And when you do the math, you wind up with the Antarctic ice sheet is out of balance by more than three-and-a-half swimming pools per second.
  
• William Brangham:
  Every second, three Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of ice is disappearing from Antarctica?
  
• Joseph  MacGregor:
  Yes, when considered on average over the year.
  
• William Brangham:
  Just to put that in perspective, in the amount of time it takes to watch this story, Antarctica will shed more water than New York City uses every day.
  The warming that is causing this ice loss varies in different parts of the continent. Here on the peninsula, the long branch of land coming on the northwest corner of the continent, warming has been especially pronounced.
  At the Vernadsky research station, which is run by the Ukrainian government, meteorologists like Oleksandr Poluden have been keeping some of the longest-term temperature records on the continent. While it's warmed and cooled at different times, Poluden says the overall trend here on the peninsula is clear.
  
• Oleksandr Poluden (through translator):
  You will notice that the temperature doesn't tend to increase all the time, as there are certain fluctuations from year to year. However, it becomes evident that, over about 70 years, the average year-round temperature has increased by 3.5 degrees.
  
• Michael Oppenheimer:
  It's becoming clearer that parts of Antarctica appear to be unstable and are losing ice much faster than we expected.
  
• William Brangham:
  Michael Oppenheimer is a climate scientist and professor of geoscience at Princeton University. He says this ice loss will only accelerate sea level rise, which happens for two reasons.
  One, a warming atmosphere warms the oceans, and warmer water expands and rises. Secondly, warming also melts ice and glaciers all over the world, sending new water into the ocean.
  
• Michael Oppenheimer:
  So, ultimately, if we lose all the ice that's vulnerable to a warming of only a few degrees, we're talking about a very, very, very big sea level rise.
  
• William Brangham:
  The most recent U.N. report predicts a foot of sea level rise this century if we continue burning oil and gas and coal at our current pace.
  But a growing number of researchers believe that, because of the emissions we have already put up into the atmosphere, that prediction understates the threat.
  
• Alexandra Isern:
  the continent's warming from below and also, you know, from above.
  
• William Brangham:
  Alexandra Isern oversees all Antarctic science for the National Science Foundation, who, for the record, is a "NewsHour" underwriter.
  She says that, in West Antarctica, two huge glaciers, Pine Island and Thwaites, are considered at serious risk of collapse.
  
• Alexandra Isern:
  There's some researchers that study Pine Islands and the Thwaites Glacier that feel that it's become sufficiently destabilized that it won't — that we won't be able to recover.
  
• William Brangham:
  Michael Oppenheimer says, if just one of those glaciers winds up in the ocean, sea levels will rise five times higher than the U.N. predicted.
  
• Michael Oppenheimer:
  The current estimates are, if Thwaites Glacier were to totally disintegrate into the ocean, that, ultimately, sea level would rise by something like five feet.
  In areas around some of our biggest cities, New York, Boston, Miami, where you have got a lot of development, homes, buildings, infrastructure, like roads, very close to sea level, how do you defend those?
  How would Bangladesh protect itself? It's got many hundred of miles of coastline. It's all right at sea level. You can't build a wall to protect that whole coast. There's actually nothing that can be done.
  
• William Brangham:
  That's millions of people that are going to have to move.
  
• Michael Oppenheimer:
  Right. There are 150 million people that live in Bangladesh, and probably a few million of them would have to move back. Where are they going to go in such a densely populated country?
  And there's already strife when people try to move into India. People get killed trying to do that now. What's going to happen when you have a few million people that all of a sudden try to move? It's not a pretty picture.
  
• William Brangham:
  Part of the reason Antarctica's glaciers are threatened is that they have been losing some crucial protection. Many glaciers form what are known as ice shelves, huge platforms of ice, some as wide as Texas and hundreds of stories tall, that grow out over the ocean and help hold their much larger glaciers up on land.
  They hold it back and not let it slide into the sea.
  
• Robin Bell:
  Imagine a piece of ice the size of Texas. Pretty thick. It's going to slow the ice as it tries to flow into the ocean.
  
• William Brangham:
  Robin Bell of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory has been studying Antarctica's ice for over 20 years.
  
• Robin Bell:
  Ice shelves are very important. They are essentially acting as bouncers in the bar, leaning up against the door and keeping the ice from flowing into the ocean.
  
• William Brangham:
  But as the atmosphere keeps warming, major ice shelves in Antarctica have also been collapsing. In 2002, the Larsen B Ice Shelf, the size of Rhode Island, completely disintegrated. These are satellite images of it breaking into hundreds of pieces.
  As predicted, the glaciers that Larsen B anchored up on land began accelerating towards the ocean. And then, two years ago, the even bigger Larsen C Shelf — this is it from the air — developed that miles-long crack in it. This shelf, which sits in front of the Thwaites Glacier, is also crumbling. And part of the Brunt Ice Shelf is expected to break off any day now, releasing an iceberg that'll be twice the size of Manhattan.
  There's still some debate over whether human-induced warming is the only thing causing these changes. Antarctica has lost ice many times before, and that also caused the seas to rise. Researchers are now trying to determine how much warmth it takes to cause truly catastrophic sea level rise.
  That massive glazer that you see behind me connects all the way up above those peaks to the enormous West Antarctic Ice Sheet. And all of that ice and snow contains a remarkable history of Earth's past climate.
  
• Alexandra Isern:
  It's like a tape recorder, a 10,000-foot tape recorder in places. And so scientists have drilled ice cores through the layers as far down as they can get, and then they analyze those layers.
  
• William Brangham:
  Glaciologist Robert Mulvaney — that's him in the black cap — works for the British Antarctic Survey. He and a small team have been drilling over 2,000 feet down into the ice sheet, and pulling out these ice cores.
  
• Robert Mulvaney:
  What we have been trying to do is recover a climate record over the last glacial cycle, so the last 120,000 to 140,000 years, to try to understand how our climate might change over the next hundred years or so, as we — as the climate responds to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
  
• William Brangham:
  The evidence from these cores and many others indicate that when the Earth's climate was just a little bit warmer than it is today, the world's oceans were over twenty feet higher.
  
• Robert Mulvaney:
  So, 120,000 years ago, when the climate was probably two degrees warmer than today, the sea level was maybe six to nine meters higher than today.
  
• William Brangham:
  Given the uncertainties over how serious sea level rise will be, and over what time span it'll occur, Michael Oppenheimer argues that there's still time to act and to prepare.
  
• Michael Oppenheimer:
  It doesn't mean we should all throw up our hands and run.
  Let's start thinking straight, let's start thinking fast about how we're going to help people, how we're going to help settlements, how we're going to help countries deal with the outcome, because a lot of it is not going to be pretty. It's going to be expensive, and it's going to be disruptive, if we don't get our act together now.
  
• William Brangham:
  This year, teams from several different nations are studying the Thwaites Glacier, trying to determine whether it's past the point of no return, and, if so, how soon its ice could end up in the ocean.
  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm William Brangham in Antarctica.
  

Links

• Antarctica is losing ice twice as fast as anyone thought
• Greenland’s ice sheet is melting at its fastest rate in 350 years
• Antarctic penguins have existed for 60 million years. Can they survive climate change?
• Polar Warning: Even Antarctica’s Coldest Region Is Starting To Melt
• Journey to Antarctica: Is This What a Climate Catastrophe Looks Like in Real Time?
• These Women Are Changing The Landscape Of Antarctic Research
• One Of Antartica's Biggest Glaciers Has A Giant Hole Under It. What Would Happen If It Collapsed?
• Huge Cavity In Antarctic Glacier Signals Rapid Decay
• Australia's Heard Island: A Mysterious Land Of Fire And Ice
• How global warming is permanently reshaping the Great Barrier Reef
• How climate change will put billions more at risk of mosquito-borne diseases

New York Times - Photographs Andrea Frazzetta

At the site of a Bangladeshi town lost to devastating storms, locals make do by scavenging what remains.
Hunting for bricks on the flooded coastline of Bangladesh. Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times Standing sometimes waist-deep in seawater on the shores of the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh, they work to find bricks, dig them out of the sludge and cart them to the side of the road to sell. The job is new, a result of devastating storm surges a little more than a decade ago. In 2007, and then again in 2009, cyclones battered the coastline just south of Kuakata, destroying homes and structures and drowning entire villages. The storms submerged forests of mangroves and left 99 local residents dead.
The sisters Kulsum and Komola Begum survived. Now they scavenge, looking for debris. They wait until low tide, when the receding waves reveal the rubble. Once they’ve wheeled bricks to the embankment, they break them into small, chestnut-size pieces. These shards are used in the foundations for homes in the new village, a mile up the shore.Despite being responsible for only 0.3 percent of the emissions that cause global warming, Bangladesh is near the top of the Global Climate Risk Index, a ranking of 183 countries and territories most vulnerable to climate change. When scientists and researchers predict how global warming will affect populations, they usually use 20- and 50-year trajectories. For Bangladesh, the effects of climate change are happening now. Cyclones are growing stronger as temperatures rise and are occurring with more frequency.Researchers warn that within a few decades, Bangladesh may lose more than 10 percent of its land to sea-level rise, displacing as many as 18 million people. Decisions to leave coastal communities aren’t really decisions at all. Families leave because there are no other options. There is no work. There are no homes. Over the past decade, an average of 700,000 Bangladeshis a year migrated because of natural disasters, moving to Dhaka to live in sprawling slums as climate refugees. Kulsum and Komola have managed to forge opportunity from disaster; they will stay, for now. They will continue to collect bricks to build the new village, even if the new village will most likely meet the same fate as the old one. — Jaime LoweA gathering at Komola Begum’s home, from left: Her father, Abdul Latif Howlader; Komola; her son Nur-un-Nabi; her sister Kulsum Begum; and a neighbor. Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times  Making a Living in the Ruins
The sisters Kulsum and Komola Begum make a living scavenging bricks, which they sell to construction workers for roughly $1.40 a sack. During monsoon season, when currents are stronger and tides wash away the sand, the family can bag 60 to 70 sacks. Over all, they earn enough to send the children to school and buy uniforms and books.A neighbor. Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times Kulsum Begum and her granddaughter Marium. Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times Komola Begum’s sons sometimes help their mother collect the bricks. “When I can earn, my children can eat. If I don’t, they will starve,” Komola said. “I do this for my kids.”
Nur-un-Nabi and Bellal Nabi. Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times Her son Nur-un-Nabi plays outside his family’s home, which is surrounded by fields of rice and grasses. When he is not at school, and not helping his mother on the shore, Nur-un-Nabi can often be found running on thin slippery dams, occasionally chasing a water snake slithering out of the flooded rice fields.
Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times The dozen miles of beach crowns the tourist town of Kuakata, roughly two hundred miles south of Dhaka. The beach is surrounded by forests of mangroves and palm plantations, which are falling victim to increasingly aggressive cyclones, tidal surges and rising seas. ‘‘When we were young, the old people used to say that the sea was very far from here,’’ Komola said. ‘‘They packed up their meals and walked their way to the sea. But now you can reach it in no time.’’
Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times Komola Begum loads bricks onto a cart that her son Bellal Nabi will pedal a few hundred yards along a path of hard-beaten earth up to an embankment where the bricks will be unloaded and broken into smaller chunks.
Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times Nur-un-Nabi breaks bricks, while his aunt Kulsum does the same a short distance away. The piles of bricks rest on an embankment that was recently raised to make it more resistant to cyclones. The Begum families’ homes are about a hundred yards from the embankment — which the more pessimistic local residents expect will withstand just a few more cyclones before being washed away.
Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times Komola and Kulsum Begum load a bag of brick for a client. A bag can be as heavy as 40 kilos, and the two sisters often help each other with the task. “It is a good business so far,” Komola said. “Sometimes we get pre-orders, and this is good money.”
Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times At each low tide, new scraps of bricks are revealed in the mud. A few decades ago, Komola Begum recalled, there were fishing villages here, and roads, rice fields and plantations.
“Some bricks come from the fishing nets,” where they are used as weights, she said. “We don’t know where the others come from.” She assumes that many come from homes that have been swept away. “Now everything is under the sea,” she said from the beach, pointing toward the ocean. Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times Links

• Climate Change Threatens Millions Of Bangladeshi Children, Warns UNICEF
• Climate Change Creates A New Migration Crisis For Bangladesh
• Bangladesh Kids Turn The Tide On Climate Change Aboard Floating Schools
• Climate Chaos Is Coming — and the Pinkertons Are Ready
• How Big Business Is Hedging Against the Apocalypse
• The Next Reckoning: Capitalism and Climate Change
• The Problem With Putting a Price on the End of the World
• Climate Change Could Destroy His Home in Peru. So He Sued an Energy Company in Germany.

Fairfax - Nicole Hasham

Australia’s top Great Barrier Reef officials warn the natural wonder will virtually collapse if the planet becomes 1.5 degrees hotter – a threshold that scientists say requires shutting down coal within three decades.
This federal election campaign is a potential tipping point for Australia’s direction on climate action, as the major parties pledge distinctly different ambitions for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
However neither party has rejected the proposed Adani mine outright or promised to phase out coal, an export on which Australia is heavily reliant.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority says limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees is "critical".Climate change has already wrought devastating effects on the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, including two consecutive years of mass coral bleaching in 2016 and 2017.
In response to the threat, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority – the federal government’s lead agency for managing the reef – has prepared a climate change position statement.
The document, obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age under freedom of information laws, has not been released to the general public despite being in development for the past 15 months.
It states that limiting the average global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees or below since industrial times began – the higher end of the Paris agreement target - “is critical to maintain the ecological function of the Great Barrier Reef”. The world has already warmed by 1 degree.
Ecological function refers to roles performed by the reef's plants, animals and habitats, including providing a tourist experience. The authority has said these processes are necessary for the reef to exist.
The document cites scientific evidence that the reef could experience temperature-induced bleaching events twice per decade by about 2020 and annually by 2050 under high-emissions scenarios.
The IPCC says the global coal industry must virtually shut down by 2030 to prevent catastrophic climate change. Credit: Fairfax MediaThe authority has long said climate change is the greatest threat facing the reef. However climate action advocates say to date, it has not sufficiently emphasised the repercussions of exceeding a 1.5-degree temperature rise.
A report prepared by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in October last year said it was possible to keep warming below 1.5 degrees, but only with "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society".
This included phasing out coal-generated electricity globally by 2050, unless unproven technology to capture carbon dioxide from coal plants was deployed.
The Morrison government has pledged to cut Australia’s emissions by 26 per cent by 2030, based on 2005 levels. Experts say the target is not in line with keeping global warming below even 2 degrees.
The government has been plagued by internal divisions over emissions and insists coal has a strong future in Australia.
It has backed the controversial Adani mine and is considering underwriting new coal-fired generation projects in a bid to boost energy reliability and affordability.
By 2030, Labor wants half of Australia’s electricity needs met from renewable sources and a 45 per cent cut to national emissions. It says a transition away from coal is inevitable, but has no plans to shut down the industry. It has expressed scepticism about the Adani mine's future but has not pledged to stop it if Labor wins government.
The Greens say that by 2030, thermal coal exports and coal burning in Australia should cease.
WWF-Australia head of oceans Richard Leck said the reef authority’s explicit recognition of the need to stay below 1.5 degrees of warming was a “long time coming”.
“Now [a government agency] has made it absolutely clear that we need a climate policy that is consistent with 1.5 degrees or lower. We absolutely need to see that backed up by substance,” he said.
Fish swim among bleached coral in the Great Barrier Reef. Credit: Ove Hoegh-GuldbergUniversity of Queensland marine scientist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a lead author on IPCC reports, said the Morrison government was displaying “cognitive dissonance” by signing the Paris treaty but not taking strong climate action.
“You can’t have the Great Barrier Reef and the Adani mine, and what that [mine] represents in terms of future resource extraction. It is simply a big contradiction.”
Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said Labor’s 45 per cent target aligned “with the very best science coming from the international community”.
Labor’s climate change and energy spokesman, Mark Butler, said the party “agrees that climate change poses a severe risk to the Great Barrier Reef and real action is long overdue”.
A spokesman for Environment Minister Melissa Price said limiting climate change was important for the reef but it was "a global problem requiring a global solution, and Australia is playing its part".
He cited the Coalition's $3.5 billion carbon solutions package and commitment to the Paris treaty and the $443.3 million grant to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation to improve the reef's health.

Links

• 'Barbaric': Adani's giant coal mine granted unlimited water licence for 60 years
• CSIRO doubted Adani mine's predicted impact on groundwater
• Legal Protections Urged As Science Gears Up To Aid Great Barrier Reef
• Malcolm Turnbull Asked To Front Reef Inquiry
• The Great Barrier Reef Is “In For A Rough Ride”
• Great Barrier Reef Likely To Be Hit With Another Mass Bleaching This Summer, Forecast Shows
• To Tackle Climate Change, A New U.N. Climate Report Says Put A High Price On Carbon
• Mining Sector, Morrison Government On The Defensive Over IPCC Report
• Major Climate Report Describes A Strong Risk Of Crisis As Early As 2040
• The Political Will To Prevent Climate Change Is Lacking, Even As The Cost Climbs

The Conversation - Matthew Carl Ives | Penny Mealy | Thom Wetzer

Sonpichit Salangsing/ShutterstockSearch online for “climate change” and “tipping points” and you’ll find some scary results. Melting ice sheets, the collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation , the permafrost methane “time bomb” and the die-back of the Amazon rainforest threaten to exacerbate the climate crisis and send global warming spiralling out of control.
But what if we could leverage similar tipping point dynamics to solve the climate problem? Like physical or environmental systems, socioeconomic and political systems can also exhibit nonlinear dynamics. Memes on the internet can go viral, loan defaults can cascade into financial crises, and public opinion can shift in rapid and radical ways.
In an article just out in Science, we outline a new approach to climate change that tries to find areas in socioeconomic and political systems that are “sensitive” – where modest but well-timed interventions could generate outsized impacts and accelerate progress towards a post-carbon world.

Sensitive Intervention Points (SIPs)
These “Sensitive Intervention Points” – or SIPs – could trigger self-reinforcing feedback loops, which can amplify small changes to produce outsized effects. Take, for example, solar photovoltaics. As more solar panels are produced and deployed, costs fall through “learning-by-doing” as practice, market testing and incremental innovation make the whole process cheaper.
Cost reductions lead to greater demand, further deployment, more learning-by-doing, more cost reductions and so on. However, the spread of renewables isn’t just dependent on technology and cost improvements. Social dynamics can also play a major role. As people observe their neighbours installing rooftop solar panels they might be more inclined to do so themselves. This effect could cause a shift in cultural and social norms.
Financial markets are another key area where SIPs could help accelerate the transition to post-carbon societies. Many companies are currently failing to disclose and account for climate risks associated with assets on their balance sheet. Climate risk can entail physical risks, caused by extreme weather or flooding. They can also entail the risk of assets such as fossil fuel reserves becoming stranded as economies transition to limit warming to 1.5℃ or 2℃, when such resources are no longer valuable.
Oil and other fossil fuel reserves could become stranded assets. The Sun photo/ShutterstockMost of the world’s current fossil fuel reserves can’t be used if the world is to limit warming and they become effectively worthless once this is acknowledged. By not accounting for these risks to fossil fuel assets, high-emission industries are effectively given an advantage over low-carbon alternatives that shouldn’t exist. Relatively modest changes to accounting and disclosure guidelines could make a significant difference.
If companies are required to disclose information about the climate risks associated with their assets – and if such disclosure is consistent and comparable across companies – investors can make more informed decisions and the implicit subsidy enjoyed by high-emission industries is likely to rapidly disappear.
Opportunities for triggering SIPs in a given system can also change over time. Sometimes “windows of opportunity” open up, where very unlikely changes become possible. A key example in the UK was the political climate in 2007-2008 which enabled the 2008 UK Climate Change Act to pass with near unanimous support. This national legislation was the first of its kind and committed the UK to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% relative to 1990 levels by 2050.
The act also created a regular ratcheting cycle which encourages more ambitious future climate action. Since 2008, emissions in the UK have fallen dramatically. However, the UK Climate Change Act’s influence beyond the UK is also significant as it encouraged similar legislation in other countries, including the Paris Agreement, which contains the same self-reinforcing ratcheting mechanism.



Using SIPs for rapid change
Thinking about SIPs in policy and business could accelerate the post-carbon transition – but much work lies ahead. The first step is to systematically identify potential SIPs and the mechanisms by which they can be amplified.
Unfortunately, traditional economic models commonly used to evaluate climate policy are poorly equipped to do this, but new analytical methods are increasingly being used in policy.
These new methods could provide more accurate insights into the costs, benefits and possibilities of SIPs for addressing climate change. As SIPs could be present in all spheres of life, experts in social and natural sciences will need to work together.
The window to avert catastrophic climate change is closing fast, but with intelligent interventions at sensitive points in the system, we believe success is still possible. Since the stakes are so high – and the time frame so limited – it is not possible to chase every seemingly promising idea. But with a smart, strategic approach to unleashing feedback mechanisms and exploiting critical windows of opportunity in systems that are ripe for change, we may just be able to tip the planet onto a post-carbon trajectory.

Links

• What climate 'tipping points' are – and how they could suddenly change our planet
• Climate change: yes, your individual action does make a difference
• Christiana Figueres Mission 2020
• 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
• Climate Change: Narrate A History Beyond The ‘Triumph Of Humanity’ To Find Imaginative Solutions
• Adapting Yourself To Take Action On The Environment
• How Is Climate Change Affecting Australia?
• Climate Change: Focusing On How Individuals Can Help Is Very Convenient For Corporations
• George Monbiot Q + A – How rejuvenating nature could help fight climate change

Women In The World - Roja Heydarpour

Last year, scientists warned that humanity has only 12 years left before facing cataclysmic consequences for the planet. Here’s why women can be the saviors of our fragile world.
From left to right: Nina Lakhani, Dr. Mae Jemison and Christiana FigueresHalf a degree in temperature seems like it would be barely noticeable, but the difference between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees Celsius is significant when measuring global warming. A world 2 degrees warmer would mean up to 3 times the destruction of the world’s natural ecosystem and built infrastructure, and at least a doubling of the number of people exposed to life-threatening heat or hunger.
Christiana Figueres, an architect of the Paris Accord, the United Nations agreement that aims to hold warming at no more than 1.5 degrees, made the audience feel that half-degree during a panel discussion on climate change at the 10th annual Women in the World Summit on Wednesday.
Figueres was joined by 3 other women who are quite literally fighting to save the planet. (Greta Thunberg, who has made waves as a youth climate activist, was invited to participate but refuses to fly due to environmental concerns.) Nevertheless, Thunberg’s presence was felt as moderator Juju Chang, Nightline co-anchor, led Figueres, Cristina Mittermeier, Nina Lakhani and Dr. Mae Jemison in a conversation that included dire warnings and optimistic calls for change.
“That’s why Greta is on the streets. Bless the outrage of Greta leading 1.5 million people on March 15th out in the streets in 88 countries in the world and growing,” Figueres said of Thunberg’s leadership in a worldwide student strike to bring attention to climate change. “They’re telling us, ‘We’re doing our homework, you oldies are not doing your homework.’”


Christiana Figueres: "If outrage falls into despair, we are literally fried"

Figueres’s warnings weren’t just about the planet’s future. Fittingly, as founding partner of Global Optimism, she also emphasized the dangers of falling into cynicism and apathy rather than moving toward activism and positive change. Mittermeier, co-founder of SeaLegacy and a National Geographic photographer, works to spur the latter through her storytelling. She has been documenting climate change for years and caught the world’s attention with a now iconic photograph of a starving polar bear. Mittermeier said the shot made people feel the urgency — and anxiety — of climate change.
Lakhani, a journalist and author who reports on indigenous communities in Central America, echoed the real effects of climate change. She highlighted the connection between unpredictable weather patterns and migration, which has been grabbing headlines, and stoking fears, in the United States. “For hundreds and hundreds of years, their ancestors have lived in a very sustainable way,” she said. “All of a sudden that doesn’t work anymore.”
Women have been particularly affected by water scarcity, she said, because more often than not, men are the first to migrate. In other parts of the world, a lack of electricity gobbles up hours of many women’s days.
For a broader perspective, Jemison, an engineer, doctor and the first woman of color to go into space, talked about the importance of science literacy and looking at the planet from the heavens. “I had the feeling that the Earth will be here. It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We have to save ourselves. Space is not a Plan B.”

Additional reporting by Anna Hall.

Links

• ‘I want you to panic’: Climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, lays it on the line for world leaders
• From Antarctica To Costa Rica, Women Team Up To Build A Climate-Safe Future
• Woman Fest Founder Plans Training Camp For Climate Rebels
• 25 Female Climate Leaders Shaping 2019
• These Women Are Changing The Landscape Of Antarctic Research
• Sydney Wins Bid To Host Major Climate Conference For Women In 2020
• Young Women More Likely To Care About Climate Change: Study
• Climate Change Is Everyone's Problem. Women Are Ready To Solve It
• Mary Robinson Launches New Feminist Fight Against Climate Change
• Climate Change A 'Man-Made Problem With A Feminist Solution' Says Robinson
• Margaret Atwood: Women Will Bear Brunt Of Dystopian Climate Future
• Indigenous Women Show The Way For Banks To Divest From Fossil Fuels
• Climate Change 'Impacts Women More Than Men'
• Women Key To Fight Against Climate Change
• When Environmental Crises Hit Homes, Women Suffer The Most
• To Stop Climate Change, Educate Girls And Give Them Birth Control
• Lack Of Women In Energy ‘Holding Back Fight Against Climate Change’
• Bringing Women Together To Fight Climate Change
• 5 Ways Climate Change Is A Women’s Rights Issue
• Women Are Breaking The Climate Taboo And Questioning Whether To Have Kids In Such A World