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Washington Post - Brady Dennis

‘What we do in the next 20 years will determine the future for all life on Earth,’ the famed naturalist says
David Attenborough, narrator of the Netflix series “Our Planet,” spoke about the impacts of climate change on the natural world. (Alice Li/The Washington Post)

Sir David Attenborough has been documenting nature for more than six decades. His various television series — such as “Life on Earth,” “The Living Planet” and “Planet Earth” — have taken viewers to every corner of the globe, capturing the beauty and complexity of the natural world.
At 92, the renowned British naturalist is hardly finished.
In recent years, Attenborough increasingly has used his spellbinding whisper of a voice not only to describe the courtship rituals of birds of paradise or the mass migration of millions of Christmas Island red crabs, but also to repeatedly sound the alarm about climate change.
Last fall at a global climate conference in Poland, he told world leaders that “if we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilization and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.” Earlier this year at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Attenborough again pushed for action, warning, “The Garden of Eden is no more."
“The only conditions modern humans have ever known are changing and changing fast,” he said at the time, adding, “It is tempting and understandable to ignore the evidence and carry on as usual or to be filled with doom and gloom. … We need to move beyond guilt or blame and get on with the practical tasks at hand."
Attenborough’s latest project, an eight-part Netflix series produced in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund, is full of sobering reminders about how climate change is threatening significant parts of the natural world, coupled with the hope that humans might find the collective willpower to avert the most catastrophic consequences.
“Our Planet” was filmed over four years and across every continent, taking viewers to the remote Arctic wilderness, the vast plains of Africa and the depths of the world’s oceans to explore how much of nature is changing — and, in many ways, vanishing — in the age of climate change. Its central message is one of urgency.
“What we do in the next 20 years will determine the future for all life on Earth,” Attenborough intones in the first episode of “Our Planet.”
Before a screening this week at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Attenborough spoke with The Post about the project, his reasons for optimism and what keeps him motivated. What follows has been edited for length and clarity:
Washington Post: You’ve been documenting the natural world for six decades now. And often with this very distinctive sense of wonder. And while a lot of your series have talked about the concerns with the state of the environment, only in more recent years have you been more outspoken about climate change and about the threat that it poses. What changed for you?
Sir David Attenborough: Well, not quite true. For example, 20 years ago, I was on Easter Island explaining [how] Easter Island was an example of a culture that destroyed its own environment and eventually killed itself, as it were. And I ended that series by saying that unless [we avoid that], we’re going to do it for the whole planet. The funny thing is people took no notice. They said, “Oh, yeah, you’re wrong about that.” Well, that was over 20 years ago. But now, of course, we are absolutely explicit about it because the scientists worldwide are absolutely unanimous about this. There’s no question that the world is warming. No question about that. The degree to which we are responsible is argued about by some, but most are absolutely agreed that humanity — we are the prime cause of this latest rise.
WP: In the parts that I’ve seen in this latest series, “Our Planet,” there’s this inescapable sense of loss — whether it’s the loss of habitat, or the loss of forests in Borneo or coral reefs in Australia. As a viewer you’re kind of left to ponder all that’s disappearing from the natural world. I assume that’s on purpose. And my question is: What do you and the producers want people to take away from this? What do you want people to come away thinking about?
Attenborough: A number of things. One is that we are totally dependent upon the natural world for every mouthful of food we eat and every lungful of air that we breathe. If we damage the natural world, we reduce that, so we damage ourselves. That’s the first. The second thing is that they should see — because the United Nations tell us that most people these days are urbanized, out of touch with the natural world, to some degree — that they should see the complexity, the beauty and the wonder of the natural world on which we depend. And finally, they should see that we have got to do something to look after it because the way things are going, we are running into serious trouble.
WP: You mentioned the United Nations. I was there in Poland last fall when you came and addressed the climate conference there and said, “If we don’t take action on climate change, the collapse of our civilization and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.” You called it one of the greatest threats in thousands of years. And you had a pretty simple message for the leaders there, which is, “You must lead.” So how’s the world doing? Who’s leading? Is there a lack of leadership?
Attenborough: Well, it’s a big problem. It’s not easy. It’s not easy to get all the nations in the world, of all kinds, [in agreement]. It’s hardly ever happened before. It happened when we saved whales. But that was just a section of humanity. Those maritime nations and people who fished — they could see the problem and they dealt with it. What we’re dealing with now is the entire globe, and that is a very big thing to do. People in Africa and Australia and China and Europe and South America and so on — we’ve all got to get together. And we all come from different backgrounds. So it’s not easy for people to understand why it’s damaging to cut down the Amazonian rain forest, for example. Lots of people will tell them no. But do the people who live there think so? Well, there are problems. And not just only in South America. In Australia at the moment, there are problems. And, of course, there are problems here in the United States.
WP: And since we are here in the United States, and especially in Washington, what do you make of the reversal of this country on climate action and what that means for the broader world?
Attenborough: Well, I mean, it’s a big blow. Can’t deny that. This country, the United States, consumes more and takes more from the natural world per capita than anybody in the entire globe. So to have people here denying it is a huge problem, and we have to do our best [despite that]. It doesn’t mean to say, “Well, in that case we’ll forget about it.” We can’t. It makes it more and more urgent that we keep going.
WP: This series certainly tries to highlight the problems facing the natural world and the dangers posed by climate change, and it carries this conservation message. Maybe less clear — to all of us — are what the solutions are. And I wonder what you see as some of the main solutions? And more important, how optimistic are you that we as a people can act?
Attenborough: I mean, the main problem, of course, is carbon. And a high proportion of our energy — the dominant source — has been from dealing with carbon, and we have to get out of that. We have the technology. There are problems — problems in storage, for example, storing electricity and power. It’s a difficult one to do. We haven’t done it properly ... Think if it cost almost nothing to take energy from the Sahara in the middle of Africa, for example, and feed it to, say, southern Europe for nothing? I mean [the sun] is up; we’ve got it all the time. Why aren’t we using it? And if you get the scientific brains of the world to turn themselves to that problem — if this country can send men to the moon, you know, I’m jolly sure that if it put its mind to it, it could solve that particular problem of electricity.
WP: On a personal note, do you have any intentions of winding down in any way? Is there always a next project? What gets you out of bed each day?
Attenborough: What’s getting me out of bed initially, of course, is that I can think of nothing nicer than spending my time looking at the natural world. But what gets me out of bed, too, is the knowledge that I have grandchildren — I don’t have great-grandchildren yet, but I hope I will have — I care about what’s going on with the next generation. And the great source of comfort I have is that younger people today are more activated than they have ever been. And if you want to take a section of the population and see where is the anxiety — it is them. It is their world. We have messed it up. My generation certainly have messed it up, and we’re giving it to them.
WP: When you see young people recently, just few weeks ago, marching basically all over the world — when you look at that, what do you see, as someone generations ahead of them?
Attenborough: I mean, strikes are a way of expressing a strong feeling that you have, but they don’t solve it. You don’t solve anything by striking. But you do change opinion, and you do change politicians’ opinions. And that’s why strikes are worthwhile.

Links

• David Attenborough: Our Planet
• David Attenborough And Prince William Take World Leaders To Task On Environment
• David Attenborough Tells Davos: ‘The Garden Of Eden Is No More’
• David Attenborough: Collapse Of Civilisation Is On The Horizon
• David Attenborough: Global warming could create 'greater migratory pressure from Africa'

The Conversation - Steve Westlake

Song_about_summer / shutterstock What can we do in the face of the climate emergency? Many say we should drive less, fly less, eat less meat. But others argue that personal actions like this are a pointless drop in the ocean when set against the huge systemic changes that are required to prevent devastating global warming.
It’s a debate that has been raging for decades. Clearly, in terms of global greenhouse gas emissions, a single person’s contribution is basically irrelevant (much like a single vote in an election). But my research, first in my masters and now as part of my PhD, has found that doing something bold like giving up flying can have a wider knock-on effect by influencing others and shifting what’s viewed as “normal”.
In a survey I conducted, half of the respondents who knew someone who has given up flying because of climate change said they fly less because of this example. That alone seemed pretty impressive to me. Furthermore, around three quarters said it had changed their attitudes towards flying and climate change in some way. These effects were increased if a high-profile person had given up flying, such as an academic or someone in the public eye. In this case, around two thirds said they fly less because of this person, and only 7% said it has not affected their attitudes.
I wondered if these impressionable people were already behaving like squeaky-clean environmentalists, but the figures suggested not. The survey respondents fly considerably more than average, meaning they have plenty of potential to fly less because of someone else’s example.
Flights can make up a big part of your carbon footprint. motive56 / shutterstockTo explore people’s reasoning, I interviewed some of those who had been influenced by a “non-flyer”. They explained that the bold and unusual position to give up flying had: conveyed the seriousness of climate change and flying’s contribution to it; crystallised the link between values and actions; and even reduced feelings of isolation that flying less was a valid and sensible response to climate change. They said that “commitment” and “expertise” were the most influential qualities of the person who had stopped flying.

Letting fly
It’s not all a bed of roses, of course. Flying represents freedom, fun and progress. It boosts the economy and can provide precious travel opportunities. So suggesting that everyone should fly less, which may seem the implicit message of someone who gives up flying because of climate change, can lead to arguments and confrontation. One person for example said that my gently worded survey was “fascist and misinformed”. You don’t get that when you ask about washing-up liquid.
My research also probed ideas of inconsistency and hypocrisy. In short, people hate it. If Barack Obama takes a private jet and has a 14-vehicle entourage to get to a climate change conference, or a celebrity weeps for the climate while rocking a huge carbon footprint, it doesn’t go down well. And if future laws are introduced to reduce flying because of climate change, it looks essential that politicians will have to visibly reduce their flying habits, too. Other research has shown that calls for emissions reductions from climate scientists are much more credible if they themselves walk the talk.

IMAGEThat people are influenced by others is hardly a shocking result. Psychology researchers have spent decades amassing evidence about the powerful effects of social influence, while cultural evolution theory suggests we may have evolved to follow the example of those in prestigious positions because it helped us survive. Pick up any book on leadership in an airport shopping mall and it will likely trumpet the importance of leading by example.
Which raises the question: if our political and business leaders are serious about climate change, shouldn’t they be very visibly reducing their own carbon footprints to set an example to the rest of us? This is now the focus of my research.

But why me?
Global emissions inequality. OxfamWeaving an invisible thread through all of the above is the thorny issue of fairness and inequality. The wealthiest 10% of the global population are responsible for 50% of emissions, and plenty of that will be due to flying. In the UK, around 15% of people take 70% of the flights, while half of the population don’t fly at all in any one year. As emissions from aviation become an ever increasing slice of the total (currently around 9% in the UK, 2% globally) this inequality will become harder for everyone to ignore.
In the mean time, the debate about personal vs. collective action will continue. My research supports the arguments that this is a false dichotomy: individual action is part of the collective. So, while you won’t save the world on your own, you might be part of the solution.

Links

• 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

World Economic Forum - Dietmar Siersdorfer

More efficient gas turbines could save money and emissions across the MENA region - but this requires political will. Image: REUTERS/Fahad ShadeedWhile climate change is right on our doorstep and threatening to wreak havoc, the radical global action that could make a difference is still absent. Population growth and carbon emissions remain unabated. Cities are expanding at an alarming rate, adding 50 million people per year.
By 2050, almost 70% of the world’s population is expected to live in cities, up from 55% at present.
It seems like an insurmountable challenge. But with available technology, we can make decisions today that will positively impact our future and that of generations to come.
Knowing what we know about cities today - their impact on the environment, the huge amount of energy consumed by buildings and city infrastructure, and their carbon footprint - I believe we need to start there. And I am going to focus on energy.
Buildings consume more energy than industry or mobility. We eat, sleep, work, shop and spend most of our leisure time in buildings. Whether they’re skyscrapers or single-unit homes, buildings collectively have an undeniable impact on the environment around us.
Consider this: buildings consume more than 40% of all energy generated globally. But by using smart, energy-efficient building technologies, we can reduce buildings’ energy consumption by 30-40%.
Energy you don’t use is energy you don’t have to generate. If less energy is required in buildings, power plants don’t need to produce as much. This will also bring down emissions from power plants, as well as the amount of natural resources burned for electricity generation.
So how do we go about realising this? Legislation is key. We cannot afford to wait for individuals to do the right thing. Pockets of change are insufficient to address such an enormous challenge. Countries and cities can act boldly and implement legislation that encourages the conversion of existing buildings into energy-saving structures, while making sure that upcoming ones are built with smart technologies in the first place.
There is also a monetary business case for this. We have proved that building technology can pay for itself within two years and helps owners achieve savings after that. They also create better environments for the people living or working in them. Happier and more productive people build stronger economies, after all.
Most of the buildings in the biggest cities globally are the same ones we will inhabit 25 years from now. There’s a strong case for retrofitting them with technology that can achieve energy savings, such as sensors and building-management systems. We have implemented this with many of our customers globally and have seen impressive results in the world’s top sustainable buildings. It is possible and within reach - as long as we can create awareness and understanding that smart buildings must become a central pillar of national energy strategies.
But it’s not only about buildings. We can apply the same concept to power plants. While the share of renewables is increasing globally, fossil fuels are still expected to make up a large percentage of the energy mix while we transition to cleaner energy. Therefore, making fossil-fuel power plants more efficient is also key. By modernising power plants and replacing old turbines with new, highly energy-efficient models, we can make a big difference to fossil fuel consumption and the production of emissions.
We now have gas turbine technology that can generate electricity at efficiency levels of more than 63%. Yet many countries around the world still have ageing power plants operating at efficiencies of 40% or lower. Energy efficiency refers to using less fuel to achieve more power. At a gas power plant with 63% efficiency, 63% of the gas used in power production creates electricity, while the rest is converted to heat. This paints a clear picture of the savings we can achieve on various fronts.
As with buildings, there is a clear business case for energy efficiency. We can get more from the finite resources we have such as oil and gas, while reducing emissions and fuel costs endured by governments. Egypt is a great example, where the government now saves $1.3 billion in fuel costs annually thanks to energy-efficient power plants.
As with buildings, reductions in emissions from power plants is also attainable today. To achieve significant results, we need to implement this on a large scale by bringing in legislation to do away with low-efficiency, highly polluting power plants.
Making this world inhabitable and sustainable for the 9.8 billion people we expect to populate it by 2050 is a big feat, but one we can accomplish together.
By bringing together know-how from the private sector and public legislation to implement new technologies, the journey to combating climate change has already started. Will you join us?

Links

• How solar is powering the Middle East towards renewables
• How to make cleantech start-ups a success in MENA
• Smart cities must pay more attention to the people who live in them
• New report: Globalization 4.0
• World Economic Forum: World ‘Sleepwalking Into Catastrophe’ Over Climate Risk

BBC - Christiana Figueres

Christiana Figueres, who helped secure the Paris Climate Change Agreement in 2015, spoke to Emma Barnett on BBC Radio 5 Live. She shared her top five things that she thinks we, as individuals, could do to help the environment.
Ms Figueres is the former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. She now uses her organisation Mission 2020 to pressure countries to do more to stop global warming.

1. What do you eat?
(Photo: Getty)"Make sure that you are not eating high carbon - which means not eating red meat every single day - if you’re eating red meat for seven days a week, begin with six, five, four - just yesterday I had a fantastic plant-based hamburger.
"There are options on the market, make sure you’re not signalling to the market that you remain in the red meat camp.

2. How do you transport yourself?
(Photo: Getty Images)


"If you are driving a high-carbon vehicle and if you’re the only person in the vehicle - that’s totally irresponsible.
"Move to public transport, move to shared vehicles, move to bicycles, move to all of the other transport means that are much more responsible.

3. Is your home insulated?
(Photo: Getty Images)"4.5 million homes in the UK are not properly insulated. Instead of warming our homes do we have to warm up the entire neighbourhood?
"Can we insulate homes so that we’re only using the energy that we really need as opposed to wasting energy, and paying through the nose for energy that is unnecessary.

4. Where are your finances?
(Photo: Getty Images)"Those of use of a certain age that by now have some disposable capital should know, where are our savings invested?
"If they’re invested in high carbon, not only is that irresponsible to the planet, it’s also irresponsible for yourself because you’re going to lose the value of those assets.

5. How do you vote?
(Photo: Getty Images)"For those of use who live in a democracy, how do we vote?
"Are we voting for those public leaders at local and national level who understand what’s going on and are willing and courageous enough to take the decisions and implement the measures which are necessary."

Links

• 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

Carbon Brief - Jocelyn Timperley

In this article on how key emitters are responding to climate change, Carbon Brief looks at Australia’s complex climate politics and rising fossil fuel exports.

Carbon Brief ProfileAustralia

• Politics
• Paris pledge
• Climate policy
• Coal
• Renewables
• Oil and gas
• Agriculture and forestry
• Climate laws
• Impacts and adaptation

Climate change is a top tier political issue in Australia. Debates over climate and energy policy have triggered several of the numerous changes of prime minister in recent years.
Australia had the world’s 15th largest greenhouse gas emissions in 2015 and its citizens’ per-capita contribution is around three times the global average.
It is the world’s second largest coal exporter and recently became the top exporter of liquified natural gas (LNG). Its electricity system remains heavily reliant on coal, despite ramping up the use of gas and renewables, especially rooftop solar.
It is also highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including extreme heat, drought, bushfires and agricultural impacts.
Based on its current trajectory, Australia is off track on its international pledge to cut emissions 26-28% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels.
Opinion polls suggest the opposition Labor party will win the upcoming federal election, expected in May.
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Australia’s economy ranks 13th globally in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), just after Russia and South Korea. Its population sits at 25 million – 53rd in the world – and is projected to increase to 33 million by 2050.
The country has recently witnessed political turbulence, with five changes of prime minister over the past decade. The current government has been in power since 2013 and is formed of a longtime alliance between the right-leaning Liberal and National parties (L/NP), together known as the “Coalition”.
The Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison has held office since August 2018. He was preceded by Malcolm Turnbull from 2015-2018 and Tony Abbott from 2013-2015, both Liberals. The left-leaning Labor party (ALP) was in power from 2007 to 2013 under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.
The country will return to the polls this year. The date is flexible, but widely expected to be in May. Opinion polls generally show a projected win for Labor, now led by Bill Shorten.
Climate change policy has a long and complex history in Australia and has been highly politicised. Some polls show it as a top issue among voters in the federal election. Tens of thousands of Australian schoolchildren recently joined the global school climate strikes.
Around 58% of Australians consider climate change a “major threat” to their country, second only to the 59% who considered ISIS a major threat, according to a 2017 poll from the Pew Research Centre. Another 2018 survey from the Australia Institute thinktank found 60% want coal-fired power to be phased out within 20 years. The same survey found 73% of people are concerned about climate change, a five-year high.
Stop the Adani Carmichael coal mine protest outside Bill Shorten’s Moonee Ponds office, 3 October 2017. Credit: Julian Meehan / (CC BY-SA 4.0).Lobbyists and the media are also strong political players in Australia. The mining lobby spent around AUS$5m (£2.7m) last year on political campaigning, compared to AUS$183k (£99k) by environmental NGOs. Australia’s media landscape is among the most concentrated in the world. The two main newspaper firms – the more conservative News Corp and more progressive Fairfax Media – are strongly polarised politically, according to the 2018 Digital News Report, including on climate.
Australia has never hosted a meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In 1998 it signed the Kyoto Protocol, which committed developed country signatories to emission reduction targets. But Australia did not ratify this until 2007, following the election of a Labor government. It ratified the Paris Agreement on 9 November 2016.

Paris pledge
Australia’s annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions stood at 550m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2015 including land-use and forestry (LULUCF), according to data compiled by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). (See “note on infographic” at the end of this article for details of this data. Note that LULUCF emissions were negative in 2015).
Emissions excluding LULUCF have almost doubled since 1970. They peaked at 700MtCO2e in 2011 and stood at 630MtCO2e in 2016.
In August 2015, Australia submitted its climate pledge towards the Paris climate talks. This “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) came under Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott.
The pledge promised a 26-28% emissions reduction by 2030 compared to 2005 levels, including land use. This is equivalent to a 22–25% cut below 1990 levels including land use, but a 3-6% rise when land-use emissions are excluded. This sector is a net sink in Australia.
The pledge says the target is “comparable to the targets of other advanced economies” and that Australia will achieve the upper 28% of its target “should circumstances allow”. It adds:
“This effort takes account of Australia’s unique national circumstances, including a growing population and economy, role as a leading global resources provider, our current energy infrastructure, and higher than average abatement costs.”The government’s independent advisors, the Climate Change Authority (CCA), had previously recommended a target of a 40-60% cut in emissions by 2030 compared to 2000 levels. Australia’s pledge represents only a 19-22% cut on emissions in 2000.
The main policy outlined in Australia’s climate pledge was its Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) (see more in the next section) and a scheme to source 23% of electricity from renewables by 2020.
Several post-2020 policies were under development, it said, including a plan for a 40% improvement in energy productivity – the amount of energy needed to generate each unit of GDP – between 2015 and 2030.
Australia’s per-capita emissions stood at 23tCO2e in 2015, according to PIK and World Bank data, around nine times those of India and more than three times the world average of 7tCO2e.
Australia says its pledge represents a 50-52% cut in per-capita emissions by 2030, compared to 2005 levels. The 28% by 2030 pledge would see per-capita emissions fall to 16tCO2e in 2030, from 31tCO2e in 2005, according to PIK data and UN population projections.
The pledge is rated as “insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker (CAT), an independent analysis by three research organisations. “If all government targets were within this range, warming would reach over 2C and up to 3C,” it says.
There is disagreement over whether Australia is on track to meet its climate targets.
According to CAT, a current lack of policies means it will not meet the targets within its pledge and is actually on a trajectory in line with 3-4C warming. CAT adds:
“To meet its ‘insufficient’ 2030 emissions targets, Australian emissions should decrease by an annual rate of 1.5-1.7% until 2030; instead, with current policies, they are set to increase by an annual rate of around 0.3% per year.”Climate Transparency, a research and NGO partnership, also says Australia’s GHG trajectory and NDC target are not compatible with the Paris goals. Policy is failing to address the need for structural change, with effective policies missing in every sector, it says.
In contrast, a recent analysis from the Australian National University finds the Paris target will be met five years early, though its findings are disputed. In December 2017, a government review said Australia was “on track” to meet its target.
Scott Morrison (right), Australia’s prime minister, arrives at the G20 in Argentina in 2018. Credit: G20 Argentina Flickr.Critics say these assessments use “creative accounting” and take credit for a large decline in deforestation that happened before the Paris Agreement was signed. Australia is also trying to carry forward credit for overachieving on its Kyoto targets, using the surplus to meet its Paris goals. The final rules on whether this should be allowed have yet to be decided.
Similar issues cloud Australia’s progress on its earlier climate pledges and goals.
As part of the 2009 Copenhagen accord, the country pledged a voluntary 5% reduction on 2000 levels by 2020, rising to a 15-25% reduction, if the world struck a strong climate deal. The CCA has said these stronger conditions have been met and recommended a 15% target, saying a 5% target is not “a credible start”. The government has stuck to the 5% pledge.
In 2010, the country pledged to reduce emissions 0.5% below 1990 levels by 2020 as part of the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. The 5% Copenhagen pledge was used to calculate this legally binding target, which takes the form of a cumulative emissions budget. Australia is on track to meet the target, helped by the use of “flexibility mechanisms” and carry-over from the first Kyoto commitment period.
Australia is part of the Umbrella Group informal negotiating bloc at international climate talks, which is mainly made up of rich countries from several continents. The group has often been characterised as less enthusiastic towards international climate cooperation than other developed countries.
Australia is also part of the Cartagena Dialogue, an informal discussion group of countries that say they are committed to becoming low-carbon.
It is one of the worst-performing countries both for national climate policy and for hindering progress in international negotiations, according to a recent NGO performance index. This ranked Australia 55th out of 60 countries.

Climate policy
Over  the past decade, several flagship climate policies have been announced and then adjusted or cancelled, including a scrapped economy-wide carbon tax. The current policy void means the next government could make a large difference to Australia’s emissions.
In August 2018, Malcolm Turnbull removed an emissions reduction target for the power industry from his main proposed energy policy – the national energy guarantee (NEG) – due to pressure from his party’s rightwing. This same group later ousted him as prime minister, with Scott Morrison taking the helm and dropping the NEG altogether.
Greenpeace protesters suspend a banner from Parliament House, depicting prime minister Scott Morrison, holding a piece of coal. Canberra, Australia, 10 September 2018. Credit: Sam Nerrie / Alamy Stock Photo.The “centrepiece” of government emissions reduction efforts is now the ERF, previously called the Direct Action Plan. This uses a reverse auction to award contracts for emissions cuts. Contracts go to the cheapest bids from businesses, local councils, state governments and farmers.
There are ongoing concerns over the ERF, including its cost to the taxpayer, ability to deliver promised emissions cuts and the additionality and permanence of any reductions.
Most ERF projects are in the land sector, though funding has also gone to new fossil fuel projects considered cleaner than the activities they replace. The Clean Energy Regulator, which runs the fund, last year cancelled AUS$24m (£13m) of contracts that had failed to deliver.
The scheme will need to contribute “less of Australia’s emissions reduction task over time”, according to a 2017 review by the CCA. “[O]ther policies will need to take up the challenge of decarbonising Australia’s economy and deliver structural change”, it said, though the ERF should be “built on as part of the policy tool kit” to meet Australia’s Paris goals.
Morrison has rebranded the ERF as the “Climate Solutions Fund” and promised it an extra AUS$2bn (£1.1bn), as part of a AUS$3.5bn (£1.9bn) “Climate Solutions Package”. The pledge has been criticised for falling far short of what is needed to tackle Australia’s emissions, particularly due to the shortage of projects in the emissions-intensive power and industry sectors. Announcing the funding in February, Morrison said:
“Our government will take, and is taking, meaningful, practical, sensible, responsible action on climate change without damaging our economy or your family budget.”In its latest budget, published earlier this month, the Morrison government said this new AUS$2bn of funding would need to last for 15 years, instead of 10 as initially proposed.
The opposition Labor party’s climate change plan would raise Australia’s emissions reduction target for 2030 from a 26-28% to a 45% cut on 2005 levels. Labor leader Bill Shorten has called climate change “a disaster”. His party would bring in a new emissions trading scheme and target “net zero pollution” by 2050.
In an effort to create cross-party consensus, Labor still supports the NEG and its emissions reduction mechanism, both dropped by the Liberals. The party would also raise the emissions reduction target.
In the event this compromise fails, Labor has outlined a AUS$15bn (£8bn) plan to cut emissions in the energy system. Of this, AUS$10bn (£5.4bn) will go to the government-owned green bank Labor established in 2012, including for a AUS$1bn (£540m) plan to begin exporting hydrogen. It recently ruled out taxpayer support for new coal power plants.
Australia’s Green party – which could hold the balance of power in the senate after the elections – has also announced a host of climate policies. These include 100% renewable electricity by 2030, bans on new fossil fuel extraction and a phaseout of coal exports by 2030, in favour of renewable exports such as “solar fuels”.
Regional climate ambition in Australia is generally far stronger than at the federal level. All states and territories, bar Western Australia, have strong renewable energy targets, net-zero emissions targets, or both. South Australia is targeting net-zero emissions by 2050.

Coal
In 2017, 61% of Australia’s electricity came from coal, as the chart below shows. However, coal power output has fallen from a peak in 2006, due to the rising use of gas and renewables. Around a third of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the power sector.

Electricity generation in Australia by fuel, 1985-2017 (terawatt hours).
Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts. 
As of January 2019, Australia has 24 gigawatts (GW) of operating coal plants, the world’s 11th largest fleet, according to the Global Coal Plant Tracker. It has been 10 years since a new coal power plant was commissioned and 9GW of planned capacity has been shelved or cancelled since 2010. There are currently no new coal plants in the pipeline. Nine coal power stations have been retired over the past five years in Australia, says CAT.
Much of Australia’s coal fleet is ageing, posing questions over where the country will source its electricity in future. The risk of summer blackouts – a major political issue – could grow as old coal plants become less reliable and higher temperatures increase peak demand.
The government is considering committing support for new coal power investment before the election, urged on by some factions of the ruling party. According to one assessment, Australia already has some of the world’s highest fossil fuel subsidies per capita.
Natural resources, including coal and metals such as iron ore, uranium and gold, are a major part of Australia’s economy. They account for 8% of GDP and 70% of exports.
Australia mined 500m tonnes of coal in 2017, making it the world’s fourth largest producer after China, India and the US, and just ahead of Indonesia. Mines are located mainly in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.
Aerial view of an open-cut coal mine in Hunter Valley, New South Wales, Australia. Credit: redbrickstock.com / Alamy Stock Photo. The Australian government expects its coal-mining activities to increase, leading to a rise in emissions in the sector. In particular, this is due to several “gassy” coal mines returning to full production after temporary declines, leading to increased fugitive methane emissions.
There has been widespread opposition to a new thermal coal mine in Queensland proposed by Indian energy giant Adani, including a series of legal challenges. Adani is now self-financing a smaller version of the project after numerous banks ruled out funding.
Last year, a New South Wales judge cited climate change impacts when ruling out another planned coal mine in the Hunter Valley.
Coal is this year set to become Australia’s most valuable export. The country only consumes a quarter of the coal it produces and is the world’s second largest exporter after Indonesia.
Coal exports were 379m tonnes in 2017-18, worth some US$64bn in earnings, and expected to grow. Japan, China and India are all significant destinations.

Renewables
Australia’s renewable capacity has increased rapidly over the past decade. By 2017, production from renewables other than hydro had more than tripled on 2007 levels, providing 10% of electricity.
Australia has one of the highest rooftop solar rates in the world: a fifth of all households have it installed, rising to a third in some states. It provides around 4% of Australia’s electricity.
Solar farms are also on the rise from an almost non-existent base five years ago. The country currently has more solar farms under construction than its total solar farm capacity. More than a million solar water heaters are installed on around an eighth of homes, while South Australia is set to build the world’s largest solar thermal plant.
Rooftop solar panels in South Australia. Credit: Andrey Moisseyev / Alamy Stock Photo.Onshore wind capacity was 4.6GW in 2017, more than a third of which is in South Australia. This compares to 7.2GW for solar, of which 6.6GW is rooftop solar. Significantly more additions are planned for both. Australia has yet to approve its first offshore wind farm.
Australian renewable capacity had a record-breaking year in 2018. Around 10GW of new solar and wind capacity is expected to be installed during 2018 and 2019.
Hydropower provides around 5% of electricity generation, bringing the renewable total to 15%. Its output has remained relatively constant for decades, with its share in the electricity mix falling as other sources increase.
Australia’s largest hydro scheme, Snowy Hydro located in the south-east of the country, has a total capacity of 4GW, most of which was completed 45 years ago or more. A 2GW expansion, known as Snowy 2.0, was approved in December.
Gordon Dam, Southwest National Park, Tasmania. Credit: Tasmanian.Kris via Flickr.
The island state Tasmania produces around 90% of its electricity from hydro and exports to the mainland during peak demand via an interconnector. Hydro Tasmania has major plans for new pumped hydro storage and a second interconnector, as part of its “battery of the nation” scheme to double its renewable capacity to 5GW.
In 2009, Australia set a target for 20% of electricity to come from renewables by 2020, expanding an earlier renewables goal. Its scheme to achieve this requires high energy users to source a fixed proportion of electricity from renewable sources by buying certificates, with the value of the certificates decreasing each year.
A large-scale generation sub-target alone means 23.5% of generation will come from renewables in 2020, according to the government. Analysis indicates the overall 20% target has already been surpassed.
The current government has no plans to set a post-2020 target, however, despite being advised to do so by its chief scientist Alan Finkel in a 2017 review.
Around 70% of Australians back a higher renewable electricity target, according to a recent poll. Australia could reach 50% renewables in 2025 and 100% by the early 2030s if its current rate of expansion continued, analysis has found. The Labor party has promised to deliver 50% renewables by 2030, if it gets into power.
Several states have far stronger renewable targets. South Australia is on track to its goal of 75% renewable electricity by 2025 and there is public support for setting a “100% by 2030” target. Victoria and the Northern Territory are targeting 50% renewable electricity by 2030. Tasmania already regularly reaches 100% renewables generation.
In 2017, South Australia made headlines after Tesla built the world’s then-largest lithium ion battery in the state. The battery is expected to pay for itself within a few years and has been widely praised for boosting grid stability.
The battery was built after tornadoes caused statewide blackouts in 2016 by downing power lines and triggering overly-sensitive windfarm protections, which have since been modified.
Australia has never had any nuclear power due to longstanding bipartisan opposition. However, it has the world’s largest known uranium resources and is the third largest exporter of the material.

Oil and gas
Australia has widespread gas resources both on and offshore, particularly off the north-west coast. It also has high onshore unconventional gas resources.
A liquified natural gas carrier off the coast of Karratha, Western Australia. Credit: Jack Picone / Alamy Stock Photo.It is one of the world’s largest exporters of liquefied natural gas (LNG), alongside Qatar, with seven operating LNG terminals and three more under construction. Western Australia alone accounts for 11% of global LNG capacity.
Domestic gas use has also risen in recent years. It met a quarter of the country’s energy needs in 2017, up from 16% in 1997. Some analysts say eastern states will need to start importing LNG to meet demand, even as other parts of the country increase exports.
The country aims to export 80Mt of LNG per year by 2020, up from 24Mt in 2013-14. This is expected to lead to a rise in Australia’s emissions due to electricity use in the plants that liquify LNG, as well as fugitive methane emissions during extraction.
Fugitive emissions from oil, gas and coal have risen 41% since 2005 and are expected to rise further by 2030. There are also concerns that these emissions could be underreported.
LNG production is currently the biggest driver of overall emissions growth in the country and is projected to offset all the savings achieved through Australia’s 2020 renewables target.
The current government and industry argue LNG exports cut emissions abroad by displacing coal, although the extent of this effect is disputed.
Oil use has increased by a quarter since 1997, though its proportion in the energy mix has stayed level at around a third. Australia’s oil reserves are an estimated 0.3% of the world total.
Petroleum production peaked in 2000, although exports are now increasing. Australia imports nearly all its oil and exports 75% of its own crude production. Last year, the government ordered a fuel security review after it was warned the country had only a few weeks of petrol, diesel and aviation fuel in its reserves.
Duke Energy lowering a pipeline as part of the Tasmania Natural Gas Project. Credit: Bill Bachman / Alamy Stock Photo.Norwegian oil firm Equinor has plans for experimental oil drilling in the Great Australian Bight, a huge bay off the south coast of Australia. Critics argue the deepwater project would put pristine coastline and marine life at risk of an oil spill.
Australia’s export credit agency, Efic, has been criticised by NGOs for supporting fossil-fuel projects around the world. A bill to expand Efic’s powers is expected to pass in early April, potentially opening the door to even more fossil-fuel support.

Transport
Transport accounts for 14% of Australia’s emissions. The government expects the sector’s emissions to increase over the next decade. Unlike 80% of the global market, Australia has no mandatory fuel-efficiency standards. Previous proposals were cut down by the ruling coalition after lobbying from industry.
It also lags behind other countries in the rollout of electric vehicles (EVs). Just 2,300 were sold in 2017, according to Australia’s EV trade body, or 0.2% of total motor sales. There are small incentives for lower emissions cars.
A recent senate select committee report outlined options to increase EV uptake, including consideration of a national target. In February, the government released a one-page EV strategy that still lacks support measures, according to critics.
Labor recently proposed a national EV target of 50% new car sales by 2030, as well as fuel emissions standards for conventional vehicles.



Agriculture and forestry
Australia has large agricultural emissions, principally due to methane released from its large livestock population. The country has around 26m cows, 2.2m pigs and 65m sheep. Nitrous oxide released from fertilised soils is also a large contributor.
A herd of sheep on the Tin Horse Highway in Western Australia. Credit: Julie Mowbray / Alamy Stock Photo. Agricultural emissions have remained relatively steady for several decades, but a 2013 government-commissioned report said this was likely to change. It projected an annual 1.2% increase up to 2050, driven by rising meat and crop exports. By 2030, emissions would have risen 10% on 2018 levels, the report said.
Australia’s land sector is a large net emissions sink, with the latest climate projections pointing to “historical lows” in recent years. On balance, 22MtCO2e was absorbed by the land sector in 2018, the report says, but this is set to shrink to 14MtCO2 in 2020 and 1MtCO2e in 2030.
The current lows are due to forest cover increases that are not expected to continue, the report says. This declining carbon sink is one of the main drivers of Australia’s emissions “growth” up to 2020.

Climate laws
Australia’s CCA is a statutory body established in 2011 to advise the government on climate targets and policy. It is modelled closely on the UK’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC).
All its proposals need to meet certain criteria, including being economically “efficient”, equitable and consistent with Australia’s trade objectives. Former prime minister Tony Abbott tried but failed to get rid of the CCA, though he did remove its advisory role on emission targets. The body has since shrunk significantly.
In 2013, Abbot closed the Climate Commission, an independent science and public education body established by the government in 2011. However, it was resurrected as the Climate Council, a non-profit organisation, just days later.
Meanwhile, a 2007 greenhouse and energy reporting act introduced a single national framework for reporting on emissions, in part to underpin any future emissions trading scheme.
Australia’s renewable electricity target and ERF are also set in law, while a 2010 act obliges commercial buildings to disclose their energy efficiency when sold or leased.

Impacts and adaptation
Australia is experiencing higher temperatures, more frequent and intense extreme heat events, and higher fire risk and drought conditions due to climate change, says the country’s 2017 national communication to the UNFCCC. “These changes in climate are expected to continue,” it adds.
Annual mean temperatures in the country have already risen by around 1.1C since the late 1800s. They are expected to reach to 1.6-5.3C, depending on future emissions.
This year, Australia experienced its hottest summer on record, with the national average temperature around 2.1C above the long-term average, as well as multiple other heat records broken. Long-term climate trends played a role in the heatwaves, its Bureau of Meteorology says.
Drought is seen as a particularly serious issue in Australia. There are strong concerns about the Murray-Darling Basin in the southeastern interior, one of Australia’s most significant agricultural areas, which is already being affected by climate change. Rainfall patterns are changing and extreme storms, droughts and floods are becoming more frequent and intense, according to a recent paper by the region’s authority.
The report came in response to three mass fish deaths at lakes within the basin, which a scientific panel concluded were caused by drought as well as over-extraction.
A 2015 report from University of Melbourne researchers outlined how many of Australia’s major food commodities could be affected by climate change, from beef and dairy production to wheat and barley. Up to 70% of Australia’s winegrowing regions with a Mediterranean climate will be less suitable for grape growing by 2050, the report said.
Black Kite flee a bushfire in Northern Territory, Australia on 9 December 2016. Credit: Brad Leue / Alamy Stock Photo.Climate change has also been linked to an increased risk of bushfires and length of the fire season. However, overall effects are complex since climate change can impact the various risk factors of wildfires in different ways.
There is also concern about sea-level rise, which is likely to be close to the expected global average of up to a metre by 2100. The country has already seen increased rates of extreme sea levels. Around half of Australia’s population lives within 7km of the coast.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is already being severely damaged by coral bleaching due to  marine heatwaves and ocean acidification. Two major bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 affected 93% and 83% of coral in the reef respectively. The government has opposed – and lobbied against – efforts to add the Great Barrier Reef to Unesco’s “in danger” list.
Coral off the coast of Townsville, Australia, November 2018. Credit: Daisy Dunne / Carbon Brief.The country first set out its approach to adaptation in its 2007 national adaptation framework. It also has a national research facility to support management of climate risks with reports on “priority themes”. In 2015, it released a climate adaptation strategy towards climate resilience in Australia.
In 2015, Australia committed to giving at least AUS$1bn (£540m) in international climate finance to vulnerable countries over five years. This was redirected from the existing foreign aid budget and included $187m previously pledged to the Green Climate Fund (GCF). Government budget papers published this month imply Australia has ruled out contributions to GCF’s replenishment round this year.
Australia does also give significant bilateral climate funding. Overall, it was the 10th largest international climate finance donor in 2015 and 2016, according to Carbon Brief analysis. The highest transfer to a single country went to Indonesia.

Links

• Now Adani Has Been Approved, These Are The Nine At-Risk Coalition Seats Most Concerned About Climate Change
• Former Fire Chiefs Demand Urgent Action On 'Escalating Climate Change Threat'
• In Australia, Climate Policy Battles Are Endlessly Reheated
• Environment Minister Melissa Price Signs Off On Adani Project
• Coalition Hits Bottom Of Barrel With Fake News Campaign Against Electric Cars
• Legal Protections Urged As Science Gears Up To Aid Great Barrier Reef
• Australian Doctors Declare A Climate Emergency
• Electric Vehicles An Opportunity For Local Government
• Hopes Emerge For A 'Great Era Of Bipartisanship' On Clean Energy Policy
• Australia’s 2018 Environmental Scorecard: A Dreadful Year That Demands Action
• 2018 Was Boom Year For Renewables Despite Political Chaos, Report Finds
• Australia Stops Payments To Green Climate Fund
• Labor's Climate Change Policy Explained: Here's What We Know
• Coalition's Climate Solutions Fund Must Last A Further Five Years
• Federal Budget 2019: Environment Restoration Fund Secures $100 Million To Cut Waste, Protect Threatened Species
• March Was Australia's Hottest On Record, With Temperatures 2c Above Average
• Four Corners Report Shows Climate Change Concerns Heating Up Ahead Of Federal Election
• Labor's Emissions Trading Scheme
• A Record Share Of Australians Say Humans Cause Climate Change: Poll

New York Times - Brooke Jarvis

Local communities are taking the world’s largest polluters to court. And they’re using the legal strategy that got tobacco companies to pay up.
Saúl Luciano Lliuya, who filed a lawsuit against a German utility company, in the mountains around, Huaraz, Peru. Felipe Fittipaldi for The New York TimesIn the mountains far above the red-brick city, behind a locked gate, there is a great, green valley. Its high stone walls are streaked by waterfalls; its floor dotted with flowers and grazed by horses and cows. Six boulder-strewn miles beyond the gate, the valley ends abruptly at an enormous wall of rock and ice. Beneath it lies a stretch of calm, bright water in milky turquoise — Lake Palcacocha. Though few of its residents have ever seen this lake, the city below lives in fear of it.On Dec. 13, 1941, a piece broke off a hanging glacier and fell into Palcacocha, creating a great wave that overwhelmed a natural dam and sent a flood surging toward Huaraz, a provincial capital in the Peruvian Andes, about 14 miles below. A third of the city was destroyed and at least 1,800 people were killed. In response, the government reinforced the natural dam and installed drainage tubes to lower the level of the lake. Huaraz boomed to 130,000 inhabitants from 20,000. Occasionally there was a scare — a rock slide into the lake in 2003 sloshed a smaller amount of water over the edge, causing panic — but to many people in Huaraz the danger began to seem remote. Until it became clear that the lake was getting bigger.
In 2009, glaciologists found that amid the widespread melting of Andean ice, the amount of water held in Palcacocha had increased by 3,400 percent over just a couple of decades. Even more worrying, this melt associated with climate change was destabilizing the glaciers hanging above it, making major avalanches more likely. The regional government declared a state of emergency and began posting guardians to watch the lake around the clock.
The guardians of the lake live above Palcacocha, in a little stone house with a tin roof. It was built by hand from nearby rocks and has no insulation, though at 15,000 feet the air is thin and the cold brutal, even in summer. There is no heat apart from a cook fire, and few supplies: raincoats, warm blankets, flashlights for working at night, snowshoes for working in winter.
On a cold summer day in February, I looked up from the lake to see a man descending a zigzagging trail. He walked lightly across loose boulders to the water’s edge, where a large ruler pierced the surface. He read it, and then turned to climb the switchbacks back to the hut, where a radio was wired to what looked like a car battery. It was his job, shared with two other men, to report on the status of the water levels every two hours, day and night.
Lake Palcacocha in the Peruvian Andes. Felipe Fittipaldi for The New York TimesThe man introduced himself as Víctor Morales, one of the guardians. I followed him up to the hut, where we listened to the rumble of falling ice echoing repeatedly off the high walls around the lake. Seeing me jump as yet another distant waterfall of white tumbled down, Morales laughed and said in Spanish: “Little! Just a little avalanche.” He would mark the activity on his next report, he said, as “minimal,” far less than the fall two weeks before, which raised 12-foot waves in the placid lake. That one he described, with a shrug, as “regularcito.” Should a more substantial avalanche happen, something that researchers consider a significant risk, the resulting flood would careen down the valley, overwhelming houses and farms until it arrived in Huaraz. According to the best available estimates, even without a collapse of the glacial moraine, a wall of rock that serves as the lake’s natural dam, which is considered unlikely, a large avalanche could lead to the inundation of 154 city blocks and more than 6,000 deaths. The regional government has considered various solutions: lowering the lake level by another 60 to 100 feet; creating a more technologically advanced early-warning system with sensors and sirens; plastering the city with evacuation maps. “We want a map in every schoolchild’s notebook,” César Portocarrero Rodríguez, an engineer and glaciologist in Huaraz, says.One of the first neighborhoods to be flooded would be Nueva Florida, blocks of brick-and-adobe homes that edge the stream from the canyon. Saúl Luciano Lliuya, a soft-spoken, 39-year-old farmer and father of two who also works as a mountain guide during the tourist season, lives there in a bright yellow house, across the street from Morales’s parents; the families have known each other for decades. Many people in Huaraz, Luciano Lliuya told me, don’t fully appreciate the sacrifices that the guardians make to do their jobs — in part because they don’t fully realize the dangers of deglaciation. Over the years, Luciano Lliuya has seen lakes expanding and avalanches increasing and ice retreating with every climb; he has seen farmers begin to argue over diminishing clean water. The loss of ice, it is clear to him, means a future that’s more uncertain in all kinds of ways. “I depend, in every sense, on the mountain,” he told me. “It is everything.”
One day, five years ago, Luciano Lliuya sat talking with a friend about the many changes and costs that climate change is bringing to the Andes, whose residents have, by global standards, done very little to contribute to the problem. “We wondered,” he said, “whether we could find los responsables” — the responsible ones — and somehow persuade them to change their behavior. He wanted, fervently, to find a way to stop the ice from melting even more.
Luciano Lliuya’s friend introduced him to a contact at a nongovernment organization called Germanwatch, based in Bonn, that works to promote equity between developed and less-developed countries. In 2015, with the group’s support, Luciano Lliuya, who had never left his country, traveled 6,500 miles to file a lawsuit against RWE, Germany’s largest energy utility. The lawsuit claimed that the company, though it does not operate in Peru, had contributed about half of 1 percent of the emissions that are causing the global climate to change and that it should therefore be responsible for half of 1 percent of the cost of containing the lake that might destroy Luciano Lliuya’s house. His claim entered the courts in the form of a demand for $19,000.
“There weren’t high hopes,” Luciano Lliuya said — either that a lawsuit would have any real effect on how quickly the glaciers were melting or that he would actually be able to make the case, in court, that Huaraz’s woes were the fault of a company an ocean away. But he didn’t know what else to do, and he felt he had to do something: “It was like ... a shout.”
Luciano Lliuya at home with his daughter Gleysi. Felipe Fittipaldi for The New York TimesLegal systems have long struggled with the best way to respond when individuals have been harmed by others. Who qualifies as a victim, and what counts as a misdeed? How can harm be traced and measured? If it can’t be undone, what might make things right? Nearly 4,000 years ago, the Code of Hammurabi decreed harsh restitution for dozens of situations. If, for example, someone failed to maintain his dam and it failed, flooding a neighbor’s fields, the negligent dam owner should “be sold for money, and the money shall replace the corn which he has caused to be ruined.” Anglo-Saxon law offered wergild, set amounts to be paid by offenders to the families of their victims, in atonement for murder or adultery. In seventh-century Kent, the lives of freemen were valued at 100 shillings, noblemen at 300.
In the modern era, common-law countries such as the United States have turned to the courts to sift through the complexities of injury, causation and remedy. Common law, as distinct from statutory law, applies in situations where no legislative guidelines have been set and courts instead respond to cases as they happen — leaning on, and adding to, centuries of accumulated decisions interpreting the basic legal idea that individuals have uninfringible rights. Modern cases that take on environmental damage rest on a heritage that includes, for example, William Aldred’s complaint, in the early 1600s, that the stench from a pigsty built by his neighbor Thomas Benton made his home unbearable.
Today, Benton’s action would be considered a tort, a harm or an infringement of a legal right that requires redress. To sue, plaintiffs in tort cases must show they have sufficient connection to a specific harm (what’s called standing); that the defendant owed them some duty of care and breached it; that the harm was particular to the plaintiff and that the defendant’s action was a direct cause of that harm; and that they, the plaintiff, suffered an actual injury or damage — including, perhaps, a future one. First-year law students are initiated into how fraught these seemingly simple questions can become when they study an infamous 1928 lawsuit involving a package that exploded on a train platform in Brooklyn and a woman, Helen Palsgraf, who was injured in the ensuing confusion. That’s the short version; the single injury claim involves, as the Wake Forest law professor Jonathan Cardi has noted, “a series of bizarre twists so curious and mesmerizing that one has trouble averting one’s gaze.” The case, whose details and lessons are still being argued, was repeatedly appealed. Some of the great jurists of the day weighed in, eloquently debating the responsibilities that humans have toward one another, especially when they harm one another indirectly, in ways that are difficult to foresee. If an act “has a tendency to harm someone, it harms him a mile away as surely as it does those on the scene,” wrote one of the judges. “We draw an uncertain and wavering line, but draw it we must as best we can.”
Tort law has, of course, weighed injuries far trickier than Helen Palsgraf’s. State courts in particular have a history of offering remedies to complex and evolving claims. Mesothelioma patients and their families routinely win monetary relief despite not being able to trace precisely which product was the source of decades-old asbestos exposure (and despite the fact that more than 100 companies tied to the asbestos industry have declared bankruptcy, leaving trusts behind to deal with the continuing suits). Oil companies have paid hundreds of millions of dollars since the mid-2000s in recompense to states and local governments for using a gasoline additive that, while employed to help meet clean-air standards, turned out to pollute groundwater (a fact the companies kept to themselves). Beginning in the 1990s, courts began to find tobacco companies liable for the health effects of cigarette smoking, even though smokers used their products willingly and even though the first 800 or so lawsuits against the companies failed. In recent years, more than a thousand lawsuits have sought to make pharmaceutical companies pay for the sprawling costs of the opioid-addiction crisis, including the costs of hospital visits, overwhelmed foster-care systems and overburdened coroner’s offices. (In March, Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, agreed to a $270 million settlement in just one of those cases, avoiding going to trial in state court in Oklahoma.)
Now a new wave of lawsuits is testing whether fossil-fuel companies can be made to pay for the costs of climate change. Since 2017, eight United States cities, including New York and San Francisco, six counties, one state and the West Coast’s largest association of fishermen have brought suit against a host of corporations — Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, Peabody Energy, among others — for selling products that caused the world to warm while misleading the public about the damage they knew would result. The suits demand compensation for a variety of expenses: in California, sea walls and infrastructure to cope with rising waters; in Colorado, the costs of combating wildfires, floods, pine beetle infestations, agricultural losses and heat waves.
In the event of a flood from Lake Palcacocha above Huaraz, Peru, the waters would inundate the Nueva Florida neighborhood (center). Felipe Fittipaldi for The New York TimesA separate legal argument underpins a parallel set of new cases, the most famous of which was brought in 2015 by a group of American children, which target governments for failing to adequately tackle climate change and uphold what one judge called “the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life.” Another track is to sue companies for misleading their shareholders, in violation of securities law. In November, Ralph Regenvanu, the foreign minister of the Pacific nation of Vanuatu, offered a glimpse of what may become a new reality: “My government is now exploring all avenues to utilize the judicial system in various jurisdictions, including under international law, to shift the costs of climate protection back onto the fossil-fuel companies, the financial institutions and the governments that actively and knowingly created this existential threat to my country.”
Ann Carlson, faculty co-director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at U.C.L.A. School of Law, says that lawsuits linking fossil-fuel companies to the climate impacts of their products could set significant legal precedents. “If one of these cases succeeds,” she says, “even if all the others are dismissed, that’s a really big deal. That’s why companies will fight tooth and nail.” But while Luciano Lliuya’s suit was accepted by a regional appeals court in Germany in late 2017 and is now moving into the evidentiary phase, none of the recent United States lawsuits has moved beyond preliminary consideration and into discovery, never mind an actual trial. The question remains whether the American tort system is prepared to litigate a problem of the enormous scale and complexity of global climate change. “Diffuse and disparate in origin, lagged and latticed in effect, anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions represent the paradigmatic anti-tort,” Douglas A. Kysar, a professor at Yale Law School, wrote in a 2011 paper, “a collective-action problem so pervasive and so complicated as to render at once both all of us and none of us responsible.”
We are still learning what dangers will arise from our altered atmosphere. Some changes, such as warmer ocean water taking up more space and pushing into cities, have a direct, calculable cause. Others, like powerful tropical cyclones or abnormally heavy flood-producing rains, are more indirect products of the ways in which humans are affecting the climate. The largest challenge to adjudicating responsibility for these damages is proving attribution: of specific damages or disasters to climate change; of climate change to specific emissions; of emissions to those responsible for them. In an early test case filed in 2008, an Alaska Native village sought to make energy companies pay for its relocation, which the disappearance of its protective barrier of sea ice necessitated. A United States District Court judge, dismissing the case, wrote, “There is no realistic possibility of tracing any particular alleged effect of global warming to any particular emissions by any specific person, entity, group at any particular point in time.”
But eight years after calling climate change “the paradigmatic anti-tort,” Kysar recently told me that “a fair number of things have changed.” Scientists have gotten better at quantifying the links between emissions and impacts. When the links are indirect, they calculate what’s known in epidemiology as “fraction of attributable risk”: how much more likely it was that an extreme event would occur because of an altered climate. Plaintiffs also argue that they don’t need to prove that specific disasters were directly caused by climate change, because climate change makes future disasters more likely and governments must take expensive steps to adapt now. We also know more about the ways fossil-fuel companies misdirected the public about the risks associated with their products and about how much companies actually emitted. “What I see right now are well-pled complaints that should get beyond a dismissal motion and proceed to discovery,” Kysar says. “For better or for worse, that’s been our process in determining wrongdoing.”
To implicate specific companies, the new lawsuits have turned to data collected by Richard Heede, director of the Climate Accountability Institute in Snowmass, Colo., who has spent much of the past 16 years searching through archives to find reports about how much fossil-fuel companies extracted during their sometimes long histories. He then estimates how much fossil fuel was used for a company’s own operations, how much diverted for things like asphalt or petrochemical production, how much volatilized into the atmosphere. The work is tedious, involving hundreds of thousands of data points and a basement full of dusty reports. Still, Heede told me, “we needed that kind of leverage in order to talk turkey with oil and gas companies.”
Glacial Lake Palcacocha poses significant flood hazard downstream to communities in Huaraz. Siphons installed in 2011 lowered the level of the lake by 7 to 16 feet in an attempt to reduce the flood hazard. Felipe Fittipaldi for The New York TimesHeede’s work reveals that, if you include all the carbon extracted and supplied, just 90 companies are responsible for two-thirds of all the greenhouse gases emitted between 1751 and 2016. Even more startling, more than half those emissions have occurred since 1988, the year that the climate scientist James Hansen, then at NASA, appeared before Congress to urge that “it is time to stop waffling” and recognize the clear link between the emission of greenhouse gases and the warming of the planet.
Heede’s data underpins many of the new United States lawsuits, as well as Luciano Lliuya’s claim about RWE’s share of climate emissions. Plaintiffs believe that they can establish fault that meets the required standard of substantially contributing to a harm by combining these estimates with recent revelations that oil companies had knowledge of the climate dangers of fossil fuels as early as the 1960s but actively worked to undermine the public’s trust in climate science. (Even as they privately prepared for climate impacts on their operations, companies followed a public strategy of emphasizing doubts about the growing scientific consensus that their products would lead to climate change.) According to Carlson, in the first test cases of climate liability (the Alaska village lawsuit and a case brought by eight states, New York City and three environmental groups in 2005 against five power companies, including the Tennessee Valley Authority), “the courts seemed to be worried, like: ‘Oh, did these people really cause the problem? Some power plants, maybe 2 percent?’ ” Now, she says, “it feels like you have the big contributors right in front of you.” Roda Verheyen, the lawyer representing Luciano Lliuya, concurs. “I long to present Heede in court,” she said. “Just because it’s a complex issue doesn’t mean that you can’t prove liability.”
The year before Luciano Lliuya was born, his father decided to move his six children — Saúl was the seventh and last — from the countryside above Huaraz to the Nueva Florida house, where they could be close to school and he to his job as a watchman. (The family also kept a house and land in the hills for raising crops and animals, which Luciano Lliuya and his wife, Lidia, still maintain. They have seven cows and raise corn, potatoes, quinoa and mint.) Land in Nueva Florida was relatively cheap; when people dig into the soil, Luciano Lliuya told me when I visited, they regularly find huge boulders, reminders of the 1941 flood.
It wasn’t guiding season, but Luciano Lliuya was dressed in hiking gear; Lidia wore the tall bowler hat and wide woolen skirt that is common to the mountains. She spoke mostly in Quechua, which is also Luciano Lliuya’s first language, while he translated to Spanish. Luciano Lliuya is currently renovating the house, replacing adobe walls with concrete, so everyone sat on the floor or on overturned buckets. “If I said, ‘It’s a flood zone, I won’t fix the house,’ that would look crazy,” Luciano Lliuya mused. “But it’s also crazy to do it knowing the danger, no? From both sides, it’s crazy.”
The technical term for the disaster that threatens Huaraz is glacial lake outburst flood, or GLOF, a fairly obscure offender in a lineup of climate impacts that includes famine-inducing droughts, the acidification and deoxygenation of the oceans and the inundation of cities like New York and Jakarta. But GLOFs are a growing concern not just in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, the mountain region where Huaraz is — hundreds of square kilometers of ice have melted in recent decades, creating at least 100 new lakes and more risk of flooding from existing ones — but also in the Himalayas and the Alps.
Víctor Morales, guard at Lake Palcachoca Glacier, Cordillera Blanca. He and other guards report on the status of the water levels every two hours, day and night. Felipe Fittipaldi for The New York TimesAs Luciano Lliuya’s case makes its way through the German court system, court-appointed experts have been assigned to investigate his claims against RWE. First, hydrologists and other scientists will study how much danger the house in Nueva Florida faces. If they confirm the danger exists, the court will consider how much, if any, of the responsibility lies with RWE. The company, for its part, has objected to the entire premise of the case. “It is simply not allowed to pick one out of a million and say, ‘You are guilty, I put the blame on you,’ ” Guido Steffen, a spokesman for RWE, told me. Should such lawsuits be allowed, he continued, a person might be sued for flying in planes or driving a car. “It would mean the war of everybody against everybody,” he said.
German courts do not use common law, but the statute under which Luciano Lliuya sued is similar to the nuisance principle invoked in many of the United States lawsuits: the legal category of “nuisance,” one of the oldest torts. It has played a role in innumerable public health, pollution and injury cases since the dispute over Thomas Benton’s stinky pigsty. Companies targeted by lawsuits in the United States also put forward arguments similar to the one made by RWE: Climate change is simply too vast an issue for courts to be able to respond adequately to the injuries it causes. There are too many contributors, too many tangled chains linking emitters to harms, too many benefits to be weighed against costs and too many consequences for national and international policy if demands for redress are actually met. They argue that responding to greenhouse-gas emissions should fall to the legislative and executive branches (though those branches have in fact failed to regulate emissions) and that cases should be moved to federal court, where judges, including the justices of the Supreme Court, have found that common-law climate claims are superseded by federal law (including the Clean Air Act, under which a 2007 Supreme Court decision determined that the E.P.A. must treat greenhouse gases as a pollutant).
These arguments have helped persuade judges to dismiss climate lawsuits before they can move on to document discovery or the testimony of experts. “The dangers raised in the complaints are very real,” wrote Judge William Alsup, when dismissing suits brought against five oil companies by Oakland, Calif., and San Francisco last year. “But those dangers are worldwide. Their causes are worldwide. The benefits of fossil fuels are worldwide. The problem deserves a solution on a more vast scale than can be supplied by a district judge or jury in a public-nuisance case.” Indeed, the sheer vastness of the climate problem has been a boon to defendants. “If I were the fossil-fuel company,” says William Ruskin, who has spent his career defending large companies in environmental litigation, “I’d open this up as broadly as possible. I’d talk about the industrial revolution. I would basically create a historical tableau and put civilization on trial.”
For plaintiffs in the new wave of cases, however, such defenses represent a fundamental misunderstanding not only of what the lawsuits are claiming but also of what the law is capable of handling. Kate Sears is a supervisor of Marin County, which is suing to recoup the costs of combating more extreme and more persistent flooding; she is also a lawyer and was part of California’s suit against banks for deceptive mortgage practice that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis, which resulted in the state’s receiving a multibillion-dollar settlement in 2012. “These are accepted and established and sort of tried-and-true claims in state courts,” Sears says. “We’re not trying to create new law here,” adding, “We’re just trying to get damages for injuries caused.” Last year a federal judge agreed, sending the case, now joined with others filed by California cities and counties, back to the court. Vic Sher, whose firm is handling that case as well as suits brought by Baltimore and Rhode Island, says that the lawsuits pose a simple question: “Should those costs be paid for by the taxpayers or by the companies who knew what they were doing and caused the impacts?”
San Francisco, New York and Oakland are all appealing the federal dismissals of their cases, and the two sides continue to wrangle over where the suits belong. In an amicus brief in the New York case, eight states and the District of Columbia argued that the refusal to hear the lawsuit in state court “would lead to the extraordinary conclusion that no law at all applies to the environmental harms caused by defendants’ allegedly tortious activities.” In another brief in the San Francisco and Oakland case, a group of Democratic United States senators noted that fossil-fuel companies’ insistence that curbing climate change is the responsibility of the legislative and executive branches seemed to be in conflict with the same companies’ past efforts to prevent those branches from actually curbing emissions. “It becomes apparent,” the senators wrote, “that Defendants’ real position is that no one should address climate change, the cataclysmic effects it is already having and particularly the real injuries that Defendants have proximately caused.”
The city of Huaraz in the Peruvian Andes. Felipe Fittipaldi for The New York TimesIf courts are persuaded to allow any of the United States cases to follow Luciano Lliuya’s to the evidentiary phase and onward to a full hearing, they will still have to find satisfactory answers to a long list of difficult questions. Where on the chain of causality — from coal extraction to power generation, for example — does responsibility lie? How do we put a dollar amount on the degree of liability? How do we account for nonclimate variables, such as whether a city magnified its exposure to damages from wildfire or rising seas by permitting development in risky places? How should other contributors to climate change, from deforestation to population growth, be considered?
Defendants know they benefit from complicating the question of fault. They could theoretically seek to name co-defendants — the auto industry, perhaps, or chemical refineries or cement manufacturers — that they argue should shoulder or share in the blame. Chevron filed a third-party complaint to include Equinor, the Norwegian state oil company, as a fellow defendant in the cases brought by California cities and counties. And when New York City filed suit against BP and others, the companies responded that the city, because of its use of the oil industry’s products in its own police cars and garbage trucks and so on, shouldn’t be able to sue because it had what’s known as “unclean hands.” If everyone is at fault, the argument goes, no one can be held responsible — or, if courts decide they can be, it will create a legal free-for-all, “the war of everybody against everybody” that RWE’s spokesman described.
It might be good political theater to “name John and Jane Does One through Eight Billion,” says Michael Burger, the executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, who has written amicus briefs in support of the new suits. But if “companies are arguing that they, individually, are too small to be held legally responsible, it would be absurd to think that an individual human being would be responsible enough to haul into court.” Complicity is not the same as liability.
Proponents of lawsuits against fossil-fuel companies have studied the cases against tobacco companies carefully. For decades, the suits failed by the hundreds as tobacco companies argued that ultimate responsibility fell not on them but on the people who chose to use their products — an argument akin to oil companies contending that they can’t be held responsible for what comes out of consumers’ tail pipes. The tide began to turn against the tobacco industry once subpoenaed documents showed a longstanding conspiracy to cover up the harms of smoking. But the parallels aren’t perfect. Unlike tobacco, energy companies have argued, the existence of the fossil-fuel economy has provided considerable advantages to society. If we had understood the perils of climate change sooner, would we have stopped driving cars or using electricity from polluting sources? Most likely not, at least not on an individual level. So plaintiffs offer a different narrative: That companies actively prevented the development of alternative energy sources and the regulation of carbon-intensive ones, thus politically and economically propping up a polluting system. “It’s incorrect to say that there’s a strong public demand for fossil fuels,” Sher, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, told me. “What we have is a desire for energy.” In February, at a hearing in Rhode Island’s lawsuit against 21 oil and gas companies, Sher argued that “emissions magnify the harm, but the tort is the deception.”
Lawsuits themselves have sometimes led to novel attempts at untangling the Gordian knot of responsibility. Settling the tobacco lawsuits eventually involved attorneys general from 46 states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories, more than $125 billion and dozens of companies — all but four of which asked to sign on after a settlement was reached. The Superfund law of 1980 imposes strict, retroactive liability on companies that create hazardous pollution and holds that any companies with even potential responsibility may be held liable for the entire cleanup of a site. Some observers imagine a future in which fossil-fuel companies support carbon regulation because it includes a provision shielding them from a morass of liability. Others point to disgorgement, a legal remedy most associated with securities fraud that compels surrendering profits gained through wrongful acts. Still other scenarios include companies’ offloading liability onto shell corporations or lawsuits continuing to lead nowhere, with climate change remaining a problem that is too large to litigate. Or the law may one day come to see things as straightforwardly as Luciano Lliuya does. “They have polluted,” he said, “and now there are consequences. They have to be responsible.”
One morning in Huaraz I woke up to the sound of tubas, part of an early celebration of carnival. People from the countryside streamed into the city, carrying enormous crosses decorated with leaves and flowers, and the streets filled with people dancing, food stalls selling fried guinea pigs and the cacophony of more brass bands than might reasonably be expected from the region’s population. As people swayed to the music, passing bottles of beer, the guardians of Lake Palcacocha were by the radio up at their cold hut, filing their latest report about the safety of the dancers below.
Luciano Lliuya also missed the day’s festivities. He was at a meeting in Llupa, the small village above Huaraz where he and Lidia raise their crops. The community was debating whether to share its water source with a neighboring village, whose drinking water, Luciano Lliuya explained, came from a stream that was becoming polluted. “The children have been getting sick,” he said. The water had become contaminated by another of climate change’s lesser-known impacts: what’s called acid rock drainage, which occurs when melting glaciers expose sulfur-bearing minerals to air and water, creating sulfuric acid. Like GLOFs, it’s only the beginning of the problems that the people of Peru will face as glaciers melt. The country has depended on consistent runoff from its rapidly disappearing ice to irrigate its fields, to run its power plants and to support the growth of Lima, a city of almost 10 million, in a desert. After a long debate, the people of Llupa agreed to share their water. It was impossible to say no to their neighbors, though they knew it would make the coming dry season even harder.
In Huaraz, above the street party, the sky darkened. Lightning flashed, but the thunder was inaudible over the noise of the crowd. The brass bands kept playing as the rain began to fall.

Links

• Climate Accountability Institute
• Legal Protections Urged As Science Gears Up To Aid Great Barrier Reef
• Environmental Groups To Sue Shell Over Climate Change
• Climate Change: Top Lawyer Says Councils May Soon Be Liable For Climate Damage
• Environmental Groups Take France To Court Over Climate Change Inaction
• Trump’s Climate Policies Face 6 Big Legal Battles This Year
• Support Is Surging For Teens’ Climate Change Lawsuit
• Climate Change In Court
• Climate Change-Related Litigation Was Once Seen As A Joke, But It Could Soon Become Business Reality
• These Residents Stopped A Coal Mine, Made History And Sent Ripples Through Boardrooms Around The World
• David Leonhardt on the economics of climate change.
• One storied American institution is ready for the coming climate chaos: the Pinkertons.
• Wall Street is hedging against the apocalypse.

The Guardian - Rob Law*

Local governments are feeling the impacts of climate change. What are the major parties doing to help?
‘Even with the most aggressive mitigation efforts, Australian society is already being impacted by a changing climate and will continue to do so.’ Photograph: folkeandersen.com/Alamy Stock Photo Announcing new climate change policies is something Australian politicians have learned to fear the most. Over the past decade, climate change politics has knocked off four prime ministers, and split political parties and allegiances apart at their core.
The political risks in this election campaign are no doubt even more exacerbated, with many calling this the “climate election”. Nor is this a battle that is limited to the Green versus Labor swing seats. It is perhaps even more acute in key traditionally safe conservative seats. Buoyed by the result in the Wentworth byelection, several high profile independents are taking on Tony Abbott, Josh Frydenberg and Greg Hunt. Central to their campaign is climate change action.
In the last few weeks the major parties have trepidatiously released their climate change policy platforms.
The LNP policies reflect a party that needs to be seen to be doing something to fend off the independents. Simultaneously it needs to somehow be seen not to be doing too much to avoid deserting votes on the right.
The ALP policies on the other hand reflect a party trying to be seen to be doing a lot to capture the political momentum from the school strike movement, and the broad majority of Australians who want more climate action. On the other hand, being too ambitious gives the Murdoch press the ammunition for headlines it has frothed over for the past decade.
Both parties’ climate policies of both parties are dominated by energy and by and large focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Such policies and actions are often grouped in the category of “mitigation”. Mitigation in this case refers to actions that are taken to limit the magnitude or rate of long-term global warming and its related effects.
The 2019 election should highlight the need for adaptation more acutely than any other previous electionWhat is missing from both parties’ policy platforms is any substantive commitment to deal with adapting to climate change. Adaptation recognises that even with the most aggressive mitigation efforts, Australian society is already being impacted by a changing climate and will continue to do so.
Even among environment and climate groups, adaptation is often missing from advocacy platforms, or a footnote. Perhaps this is because for many climate activists, promoting adaptation sometimes has that feeling that the battle to combat rising temperatures has been lost.
Adaptation has long been the poor cousin of climate change policy and funding so perhaps this is no surprise. But what is perhaps more intriguing is that adaptation has often been the area of climate change policy that has had more bipartisan support. One of the first national adaptation strategies came about during the Howard era, and in many states, adaptation activity carried through changes in government more in tact than mitigation.
If anything, the 2019 election should highlight the need for adaptation more acutely than any other previous election. The number of weather and climate records surpassed in this last term of government has brought climate change “home” to many Australians. Images of dead fish in the Murray Darling, burning rainforests and button grass plains in the Tasmanian wilderness, coral reef bleaching is front of mind for a large majority of Australians. So are the more personal experiences of hotter and drier conditions and more extreme weather events.
No longer an abstract concern for future generations, it is an issue that is affecting Australians now and in major and complex ways. Unsurprisingly it is this dramatic shift from the abstract to the tangible that is galvanising non-traditional political actors to speak up and demand more. Groups like Farmers for Climate Action, the School Strike for Climate movement, and the Climate and Health Alliance are new movements challenging the climate politics of the past decade.
Local governments and their communities across the country are on the frontline of climate change impacts right here right now and need federal support.
Interestingly, in its 2018 annual survey of Australian attitudes towards climate change, an Ipsos poll found that Australians considered local governments leading when it comes to climate action compared to state and federal governments and industry/business.
Infrastructure upgrades to improve resilience to extreme weather events and hotter and drier conditions are obvious needs. Community and social resilience programs to ensure communities are informed, empowered and have capacity to respond to climate change are also crucial. Several programs are under way, led by local governments such as the Ramp Up Resilience project in rural shires in northern Victoria, and the Resilient South project in South Australia.
Critically, what is needed most is funding support to local communities to design local solutions to the very localised impacts of climate change already being experienced. This goes beyond disaster relief funding, but takes a more proactive approach so that communities can become more resilient to disasters as they will inevitably unfold.
In coming weeks hopefully we will hear both parties reveal the rest of their climate change policies, the much needed adaptation policies.

• Rob Law works for the Victorian Greenhouse Alliances, regional networks of local governments working on climate change projects, advocacy and knowledge sharing.

Links

• Former fire chiefs warn Australia unprepared for escalating climate threat
• Greens say Labor in no position 'to make ultimatums' over climate policy
• Local-government: adapting to climate change
• Australian Local Government Climate Action Review
• Councils feel the pinch on climate change
• Climate Change Adaptation Actions for Local Government
• Climate Change, Bushfires and Local Government Roundtable
• Climate Change Challenge Accepted By Group Of Local Councils
• Australian Local Councils Lead The Way In Tackling Climate Change As Federal Policy Stalls
• Local Councils Step Up Climate Change Action With CPP

ABC - Jackson Gothe-Snape

Constituents of Tony Abbott and Kevin Andrews have high levels of concern for climate change.ABC News: Nick Haggarty Key Points

• New research shows seats where climate change concerns are most common
• "Keeping day to day living costs down" is the issue most often identified by Australians as a concern
• Concern over the quality of governance is growing

Liberal seats held by vacating and conservative MPs have extremely high levels of concern for climate change.
And global warming fear was increasing even before the Federal Government approved the Adani coal mine this week.
Electorate-level research released on Wednesday shows the extent of concern for climate change as the election looms.
The polling, completed by Roy Morgan during 2018 as part of the democracy non-profit Australian Futures Project, shows "keeping day-to-day living costs down" is the most pressing concern across Australia, ahead of "improving health services and hospitals" and "open and honest government".
Climate change is the next most commonly identified issue.
At least one in three people (33 per cent) have climate change concerns in nine Liberal seats that are potentially vulnerable at the coming election.
That is significantly above the national average of approximately one in four people (26 per cent).
A majority of these seats have either conservative MPs recontesting or new candidates replacing retiring or ousted MPs.


Australian Futures Project executive director Ralph Ashton highlighted Warringah and Higgins as areas where climate change was the biggest concern.
"People in those seats are represented by a party that they perceive is not doing enough on the issue of climate change," he said.
"People are more concerned about it now than they were even 12 months ago."Roy Morgan asked Australian electors to nominate the three issues of most importance to them from a list of 18.
The survey included face-to-face interviews with 330 respondents on average in each electorate.
"No current member of Parliament in the Lower House is fully addressing the concerns of their electorate," Mr Ashton said.
"What the politicians are talking about is really not what the Australian public is concerned with."

Call for open and honest government
The popularity of "open and honest government" concerns echoes findings from the long-running Australian Election Study at the Australian National University.
ANU's Ian McAllister said alongside traditional concerns such as health, education and immigration, governance is becoming an issue for Australians.
"Increasingly over the last few years we've seen 'good governance' come in — people have felt they're not being properly governed," he said.
"It's come about due to declining trust in politicians and political parties, and it's particularly come about in the past five or six years with the frequent changes in party leadership."
Mr Ashton said people wanted government and political leaders to solve hard problems.
"Climate change is a classic case of short-term thinking in Australia where we need to shift the conversation from short-term problems to long-term solutions," he said.
The federal election is set to be held in May.

Links

• Adani coal mine a step closer with Environment Minister endorsing groundwater approvals
• Adani approval could be the last decision of Morrison Government
• Environment Minister Melissa Price Signs Off On Adani Project
• As The Climate Warms, Heat Is Building On Politicians To Respond
• 'Missed Opportunity': Australia's 'Difficult' Position In UN Climate Change Talks
• Pacific Nations Under Climate Threat Urge Australia To Abandon Coal Within 12 Years
• Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga Says Australia's Climate Change Inaction Undermines Its 'Pacific Pivot'
• Big Coal And Friends On Track To Shut Down Your Climate Activism
• It Should Not Be Up To Australia's Schoolchildren To Stop Adani
• Adani To Self-Fund $2b Carmichael Mine, Construction To Start Before Christmas
• Where Cheap Power Matters More Than Environmental Armageddon
• Adani Water Project Bypasses Full Environmental Impact Assessment Against Advice
• In Australia, Climate Policy Battles Are Endlessly Reheated
• Coalition Hits Bottom Of Barrel With Fake News Campaign Against Electric Cars
• Electric Vehicles An Opportunity For Local Government
• News Corp Launches Offensive Against Labor's Climate Policy Amid Glowing Budget 2019 Previews
• The Challenge Facing Labor On Climate Change
• ALP Climate Policy Requires Serious Scrutiny
• Hopes Emerge For A 'Great Era Of Bipartisanship' On Clean Energy Policy
• Australia Stops Payments To Green Climate Fund
• Coalition's Climate Solutions Fund Must Last A Further Five Years
• Federal Budget 2019: Environment Restoration Fund Secures $100 Million To Cut Waste, Protect Threatened Species

SBS - Maani Truu

Twenty-three of Australia’s most senior former emergency service bosses have come together in an unprecedented show of unity, calling on the Prime Minister to 'get on with the job' of reducing greenhouse gasses.



Longer bushfire seasons, ‘dry’ lightning storms, increased flooding and higher rates of anxiety: this is Australia’s future without immediate action on climate change, some of Australia’s most senior former emergency service chiefs have warned.
In an unprecedented joint statement directed to the state and federal governments, 23 former emergency service bosses have come together on Wednesday to call for stronger action on climate change, which they believe is threatening lives in Australia.
The 23 signatories, representing every state and territory, have called on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to commit to a parliamentary inquiry into whether the emergency services are fit to defend Australia against the increasing risk of natural disasters.
A fire fighter in front of a spot fire in Victoria. AAP“In the last year we’ve seen unseasonal fires in Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia, floods and twin cyclones in parts of northern Australia, longer bushfire danger periods, and fires burning in rainforests,” Mr Mullins said.
“Emergency responders are doing their best to protect Australians from worsening extreme weather, but the federal government just hasn’t stepped up to do its part by rapidly and deeply reducing our emissions.”
The demands include that the Prime Minister meets with a delegation of former emergency service leaders, “who will outline, unconstrained by their former employers, how climate change risks are rapidly escalating”, a cease on cutting budgets of services involved in preventing natural disasters and continuing research into mitigating against climate change.
Water bombers in Sydney. AAPThe former executive director of Emergency Management Queensland and former Queensland Fire & Rescue Service deputy commissioner Frank Pagano told SBS News he signed the joint statement because weather patterns can no longer be predicted.
“As former senior emergency service leaders, we are in a position now to talk more unrestrained about what we believe is happening with the weather,” he said.
This year, Australia suffered through its warmest January on record, with fires devastating Tasmania, Victoria and parts of NSW, while in the north of the country, unprecedented flooding swept through Queensland.
Emergency bushfire warnings were in place in Tasmania this summer. AAPAnd according to the State of the Climate 2018 report, there has been a long-term increase in extreme fire conditions and the length of bushfire seasons in Australia since the 1950s.
“Our aim is to speak as one. We speak with some authority in the sense of our experience between us. The signatories to the document have well over 600 years of experience,” Mr Pagano said.
“We've seen things and experienced things over our lifetime and over our career that I think can be very informative to a government.”

Australia’s lack of resources
One issue highlighted by the statement was Australia’s reliance on leasing firefighting equipment, such as aircraft, from the northern hemisphere during their cooler months. As Australia’s fire season grows to overlap with the US and Canada, access to the equipment becomes restricted.
Australian states and territories are also dependent on sharing resources, including water bombers, trucks and firefighters, which has up until now been possible due to a staggered start to fire seasons across the country.
“As emergency services leaders we would obviously talk and we would get together and we would plan our attack on the fire season and we'd share resources,” Mr Pagano said.
“But these days that's very difficult because we're having events occurring in each state simultaneously … you're no longer able to plan for that.”
WA firefighters fight a blaze. DEPARTMENT OF FIRE AND EMERGENCYAccording to Mr Pagano and the other signatories to the statement, heavy firefighting aircraft is prohibitively expensive to own and operate - but he said it’s time for the federal government to explore whether Australia needs to purchase their own equipment.
“Now countries and hemispheres are competing for resources,” Mr Pagano said.
“It would be very very bad if we have extreme weather events in Australia and we can't get those resources.”

The psychological cost of not acting
Bushfire survivor Janet Reynolds told SBS News earlier this year that she had suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after fleeing her home in last years NSW bushfires.
“The skin on the backs of my hands felt as though it was burning all the time,” she said.
“You think of all the people that are going to be threatened if something isn’t worked out now.”
Janet Reynolds standing on her property after it was destroyed by fire. SuppliedPsychologist Dr Susie Burke specialises in the psychological effects of climate change, including treating disorders like depression and post-traumatic stress following extreme weather disasters.
But it’s not just bushfire survivors that are left feeling anxious about the increasing risks of natural disaster.
“We also look at the indirect effects of climate change ... this might be from some of the more slowly unfolding climate impacts. So that might be a prolonged drought or a shifting growing season,” she said.
“That has flow-on effects to it in terms of financial stress and family stress and the economic stresses for farming families and individuals and communities.”
And the number of people suffering from climate change anxiety and distress is growing, Dr Burke said.
“There's a number of reasons for why that might be. One is that with every year of insufficient action around the world we increase the price of runaway climate change and catastrophic consequences,” she said.
“The other thing is that we're also just at the end of a hot dry summer where I work and it's often the case that at this time of year people are looking around at the environment and thinking ‘oh this is what climate change is going to mean.’
“That's truly frightening and we're not doing enough about it globally and certainly not enough nationally.”

Links

• Veteran firefighter slams government over climate change inaction
• 'We've seen a big rise in anguish': Australian councils unite over bushfire risks
• Australia’s bushfire survivors demand government action on climate change
• Hundreds of thousands leave schools world-wide to protest climate change inaction
• Taking Up The Slack: When Governments Don’t Act On Climate Change
• Youth Climate Strikers: 'We Are Going To Change The Fate Of Humanity'
• Astounded': Former Fire Chief Unloads On Politicians Over Climate Change Inaction
• The Human Survival Summit: The Next Wave Of Climate Change Protests Is Coming
• Ardern's Plea For Climate Change Action: Be 'On The Right Side Of History'
• Climate Triage: Swift Action Is Required To Save Humanity From Dangerous Global Warming

Yale Climate Connections - Dana Nuccitelli

Intelligence analysts have agreed since the late 80s that climate change poses serious security risks
Intelligence officials for three decades have warned of security risks from climate change. (Photo credit: Master Sgt. Ken Hammond, U.S. Air Force)A series of authoritative governmental and nongovernmental analyses over more than three decades lays a strong foundation for concern over climate change implications for national security.
Most recently, the national intelligence community – including the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other federal agencies – in January 2019 submitted the annual “Worldwide Threat Assessment.” In it, the intelligence agencies stated that “climate change is an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources such as food and water. These impacts are already occurring, and the scope, scale, and intensity of these impacts are projected to increase over time.”
That report from National Intelligence Director Daniel R. Coats, a former U.S. Republican senator from Indiana, was just the most recent in a long string of analyses that any upcoming challenges to such conclusions will have to address. Those conclusions clearly are at odds with the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine and reverse federal climate policies, and they cast doubt on the President’s next day tweet that “Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!”
The Trump administration is considering establishing a presidential commission to investigate whether there's a link between climate change and national security. We already know. Click To TweetWith the White House now reportedly considering an executive order to establish a Presidential Committee on Climate Security that would contest such findings, it’s useful to review the history of climate change/national security official reports and findings. Although it’s unclear where the internal White House thinking on such a committee will lead, it’s been authoritatively reported that the push for such an effort is led by two individuals – Will Happer and Steven Koonin – widely known to have climate change views far different from those of the “established” science community as represented, for instance, by IPCC and the National Academy of Sciences.
Map of the Earth with a six-meter sea level rise represented in red(uniform distribution, actual sea level rise will vary regionally).NASALARGE IMAGEFormer Princeton physicist Will Happer, now with the White House staff, has a long history of scientifically challenged views about climate science. In the past a frequent favorite witness before House hearings overseen by members rejecting the climate science community “consensus,” Happer has acknowledged in a court case receiving funding from Peabody Coal and from other fossil fuel interests. In 2015 the New York Times reported that he was caught in a Greenpeace “sting” agreeing to take money from unknown Middle Eastern oil and gas interests in exchange for writing a report challenging climate science. Steven Koonin has written on blogs and in the Wall Street Journal pieces in stark contrast to the view of the overwhelming scientific consensus.
Concerned about reports of a potential new presidential review of climate change and national security, 58 former military and intelligence officials on March 5 sent a letter to the president cautioning that “imposing a political test on reports issued by the science agencies, and forcing a blind spot onto the national security assessments that depend on them, will erode our national security.”

Three decades of climate national security warnings
Climate and water resources expert Peter Gleick, in a recent review of more than 100 national security documents addressing climate change, has assessed decades of official national security strategy documents prepared to guide Democratic and Republican administrations on national defense priorities and military strategy. Those analyses began warning about threats to U.S. national security from environmental factors in the late 1980s, and in 1990, a U.S. Naval War College Report warned of potential climate change hazards:
Naval operations in the coming half century may be drastically affected by the impact of global climate change. For the Navy to be fully prepared for operations in this future climate environment, resources of both mind and money must be committed to the problem.President George H.W. Bush’s national security strategy in August 1991 acknowledged climate change as a security issue. In 2003, concerned by research documenting past instances of abrupt climate changes, the Pentagon commissioned a report with the name “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security.” The report authors wrote:
an abrupt climate change scenario could potentially destabilize the geo-political environment, leading to skirmishes, battles, and even war … Violence and disruption stemming from the stresses created by abrupt changes in the climate pose a different type of threat to national security than we are accustomed to today.They concluded their report cautioning about climate disruption and conflict becoming “endemic features of life.”
'… increasing risks from climate change should be addressed now because they will almost certainly get worse if we delay.’Fast forward to 2007: A group of retired three- and four-star admirals and generals working with the Center for Naval Analyses wrote a report on “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change.” Their report recommended that “The U.S. should commit to a stronger national and international role to help stabilize climate change at levels that will avoid significant disruption to global security and stability.” The authors concluded by saying:
Climate change can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world, and it presents significant national security challenges for the United States. Accordingly, it is appropriate to start now to help mitigate the severity of some of these emergent challenges. The decision to act should be made soon in order to plan prudently for the nation’s security. The increasing risks from climate change should be addressed now because they will almost certainly get worse if we delay.A year later, the National Intelligence Council judged that more than 30 U.S. military installations were already facing elevated levels of risk from rising sea levels.
Then came the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review also warning of security threats posed by climate change:
Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease, and may spur or exacerbate mass migration.
While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world.The prognoses got no less worrisome when in 2014 the subsequent Quadrennial Defense Review again cautioned that climate change acts as a threat multiplier:
Climate change poses another significant challenge for the United States and the world at large. As greenhouse gas emissions increase, sea levels are rising, average global temperatures are increasing, and severe weather patterns are accelerating. These changes, coupled with other global dynamics, including growing, urbanizing, more affluent populations, and substantial economic growth in India, China, Brazil, and other nations, will devastate homes, land, and infrastructure. Climate change may exacerbate water scarcity and lead to sharp increases in food costs. The pressures caused by climate change will influence resource competition while placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and governance institutions around the world. These effects are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions – conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.In 2015, responding to a Congressional request, the Department of Defense stated that climate change is posing “a present security threat, not strictly a long-term risk … the Department is beginning to include the implications of a changing climate in its frameworks for managing operational and strategic risks prudently.”
There’s more. Many of those same concerns were echoed in the Trump administration’s January 2019 Department of Defense report documenting vulnerabilities of 79 military installations to events exacerbated by climate change impacts such as floods, droughts, and wildfires. As just one example, Naval Station Norfolk – the world’s largest naval base – is already experiencing frequent sunny-day flooding.
It’s unclear at this point just when – and even whether – the Trump administration will proceed with establishing a formal overview of climate change/national security links. What is clear is that any such review will have an extensive body of previous official reports to upend if it ends up reflecting conflicting viewpoints.

Links

• Veterans Are Concerned About Climate Change, And That Matters
• Climate Change An 'Imminent' Security Threat, Risk Experts Say
• U.S. Intelligence Officials Warn Climate Change Is A Worldwide Threat
• We Need To Do More To Understand How Climate Change And Conflict Are Linked. Here's Why
• Approving The Climate Security Agenda
• Why Climate Change Is A Security Matter
• Climate Change-Related Disaster Relief Is Increasing Demand On Defence Department, Senate Hears
• Climate Change An 'Existential Security Risk' To Australia, Senate Inquiry Says
• Climate Change Is A Security Threat – So Where Is The UN Security Council?
• The long history of climate change security risks
• Climate change & national security
• Implications of climate change for national security
• Covering climate change as a national security issue

The Conversation - Marc Hudson

Three words, so much mileage: Tony Abbott’s anti-carbon tax refrain has been a fixture on the policy landscape for years. AAP Image/Julian Smith It might feel like the past decade of climate policy wars has led us into uncharted political waters. But the truth is, we’ve been sailing around in circles for much longer than that.
The situation in the late 1990s bore an uncanny resemblance to today: a Liberal-led government; a prime minister who clearly favours economic imperatives over environmental ones; emerging internal splits between hardline Liberal MPs and those keen to see stronger climate action; and a Labor party trying to figure out how ambitious it can be without being labelled as loony tree-huggers.
The striking parallels between now and two decades ago tell us something about what to expect in the months ahead.
After a brief flirtation with progressive climate policy in the 1990 federal election, the Liberals had, by the final years of the 20th century, become adamant opponents of climate action.
In March 1996, John Howard had come to power just as international climate negotiations were heating up. In his opinion, even signing the United Nations climate convention in Rio in 1992 had been a mistake. He expended considerable effort trying to secure a favourable deal for Australia at the crunch Kyoto negotiations in 1997.
Australia got a very generous deal indeed (and is still talking about banking the credit to count towards its Paris target), and Howard was able to keep a lid on climate concerns until 2006. But it was too little, too late, and in 2007 his party began a six-year exile from government as Rudd, then Gillard, then Rudd took the climate policy helm, with acrimonious results.
When Tony Abbott swept to power in 2013, his first act was to abolish the Labor-appointed Climate Commission, which resurrected itself as the independent Climate Council. Next, he delivered his signature election campaign promise: to axe the hated carbon tax (despite his chief of staff Peta Credlin’s later admission that the tax wasn’t, of course, actually a tax).
Abbott also reduced the renewable energy target, and sought (unsuccessfully) to keep climate change off the agenda at the 2014 G20 summit in Brisbane.
Abbott and his environment minister Greg Hunt did preside over some policy offerings – most notably the Direct Action platform, with the A$2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund at its heart, dishing out public money for carbon-reduction projects. The pair also announced an emissions reduction target of 26-28% on 2005 levels by 2030, which Australia took as its formal pledge to the crucial 2015 Paris climate talks.
But by the time nations convened in Paris, Malcolm Turnbull was in the hot seat, having toppled Abbott a few months earlier. Many observers hoped he would take strong action on climate; in 2010 he had enthused about the prospect of Australia going carbon-neutral. But the hoped-for successor to the carbon price never materialised, as Turnbull came under sustained attack from detractors within both his own party and the Nationals.
Then, in September 2016, a thunderbolt (or rather, a fateful thunderstorm). South Australia’s entire electricity grid was knocked out by freak weather, plunging the state into blackout, and the state government into a vicious tussle with Canberra. The dispute, embodied by SA Premier Jay Weatherill’s infamous altercation with the federal energy minister Josh Frydenberg, spilled over into a wider ideological conflict about renewable energy.
With tempers fraying on all sides, and still no economy-wide emissions policy in place, business began to agitate for increasingly elusive investment certainty (although they had played dead or applauded when Gillard’s carbon price was under attack).
In an era of policy on the run, things accelerated to a sprinter’s pace. Frydenberg suggested an emissions intensity scheme might be looked at. Forty-eight hours later it was dead and buried.
Turnbull commissioned Chief Scientist Alan Finkel to produce a report, which included the recommendation for a Clean Energy Target, prompting it to be vetoed in short order by the government’s backbench.
Within three months Frydenberg hurriedly put together the National Energy Guarantee (NEG), which focused on both reliability and emissions reduction in the electricity sector. The policy gained support from exhausted business and NGOs, but not from the Monash Forum of Tony Abbott and cohorts, who preferred the sound of state-funded coal instead. And then, in August 2018, the NEG was torpedoed, along with Turnbull’s premiership.
The next man to move into the Lodge, Scott Morrison, was previously best known in climate circles for waving a lump of coal (kindly provided, with lacquer to prevent smudging, by the Minerals Council of Australia) in parliament.
Scott Morrison’s new-found enthusiasm for Snowy 2.0 stands in contrast to his earlier excitement about coal. AAP Image/Mick TsikasMorrison’s problems haven’t eased. His energy minister Angus Taylor and environment minister Melissa Price have each come under attack for their apparent lack of climate policy ambition, and Barnaby Joyce and a select few fellow Nationals recently endangered the fragile truce over not mentioning the coal.
Meanwhile, Labor, with one eye on the Green vote and another on Liberal voters appalled by the lack of action on climate change, are trying to slip between Scylla and Charybdis.

Shorten’s offering
While Labor has decided not to make use of a Kyoto-era loophole (taking credit for reduced land-clearing), its newly released climate policy platform makes no mention of keeping fossil fuels in the ground, dodges the thorny issue of the Adani coalmine, and has almost nothing to say on how to pay the now-inevitable costs of climate adaptation.
What will the minor parties say? Labor’s policy is nowhere near enough to placate the Greens’ leadership, but then the goal for Labor is of course to peel away the Greens support – or at least reduce the haemorrhaging, while perhaps picking up the votes of disillusioned Liberals.
Overall, as Nicky Ison has already pointed out on The Conversation, Labor has missed an “opportunity to put Australians’ health and well-being at the centre of the climate crisis and redress historical injustices by actively supporting Aboriginal and other vulnerable communities like Borroloola to benefit from climate action”.
And so the prevailing political winds have blown us more or less back to where we were in 1997: the Liberals fighting among themselves, business despairing, and Labor being cautious.
But in another sense, of course, our situation is far worse. Not only has a culture war broken out, but the four hottest years in the world have happened in the past five, the Great Barrier Reef is suffering, and the Bureau of Meteorology’s purple will be getting more of a workout.
We’ve spent two decades digging a deeper hole for ourselves. It’s still not clear when or how we can climb out.

Links

• Ten years of backflips over emissions trading leave climate policy in the lurch
• Obituary: Australia's carbon price
• A year since the SA blackout, who's winning the high-wattage power play?
• The pro-coal 'Monash Forum' may do little but blacken the name of a revered Australian
• Labor's climate policy: a decent menu, but missing the main course
• Electric Vehicles An Opportunity For Local Government
• Be The Change You Want To See In The World: How Individuals Can Help Save The Planet From Climate Catastrophe
• News Corp Launches Offensive Against Labor's Climate Policy Amid Glowing Budget 2019 Previews
• The Challenge Facing Labor On Climate Change
• ALP Climate Policy Requires Serious Scrutiny
• Hopes Emerge For A 'Great Era Of Bipartisanship' On Clean Energy Policy
• Australia Stops Payments To Green Climate Fund
• Labor's Climate Change Policy Explained: Here's What We Know
• Coalition's Climate Solutions Fund Must Last A Further Five Years
• Federal Budget 2019: Environment Restoration Fund Secures $100 Million To Cut Waste, Protect Threatened Species
• Four Corners Report Shows Climate Change Concerns Heating Up Ahead Of Federal Election
• Labor's Emissions Trading Scheme
• Greens Set 2030 Cut-Off For Coal Exports And Coal-Fired Power Stations
• Threatened Species
• What Are Major Parties’ Climate Change Policies?
• Labor To Tell Business It Won't Let Energy Policy Be Held 'Hostage' 

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Early-stage research into ways to limit the impact of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef is being approved in a "policy vacuum", potentially limiting risk assessments and undermining public support, researchers say.
So-called geoengineering to draw down carbon dioxide or mask the effect of a warming planet has begun to draw science funding, including for three projects to protect Australia's largest network of coral reefs.
Increasing cloud cover to help cool the Great Barrier Reef is one type of geoengineering being considered for testing. Credit: Photo: Bloomberg
However, "the current laws do not guarantee robust governance for field testing of these technologies," according to a paper published in the Climate Policy journal. "Nor do they provide the foundation for a more coherent national policy on climate intervention technologies more generally."
Of the three reef-related projects with feasibility study approval, two will start very small.
One involves spraying a biodegradable reflective surface polymer film of calcium carbonate to reflect solar radiation, while the other would pump cooler water from depths of 10 to 30 metres to ease the heat stress of surface corals.
Funding has been awarded for feasibility studies of three geoengineering technologies to protect the reef: (1) a ‘floating sunshield’ of reflective surface film made of calcium carbonate to reflect sunlight and lower water temperatures; (2) marine cloud brightening; and (3) water mixing. Credit: Climate PolicyThe third proposal would see microscopic salt particles propelled into low-lying marine clouds to increase their reflectivity and reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the sea surface.
"Australia currently has no national law or policy governing geoengineering or solar radiation management, or even on how such activities might fit within national climate response strategy," the paper notes.
Jan McDonald, a professor of environmental and climate law at the University of Tasmania and the paper's lead author, said the "prognosis [for the reef] is looking pretty grim", with scientists estimating most of the world's corals will be lost even if global warming is kept to the low end of the Paris climate goal of 1.5 to 2 degrees.
As a result, it is inevitable climate interventions will be tried even without dodging our "serious obligation to reduce carbon dioxide", Professor McDonald said.
The experience in Britain, where a government-funded project aimed at assessing the feasibility of injecting particles into the stratosphere was halted in 2012, suggested public consultation and transparency were needed at the start,'' she said. Without that, the public trust in regulators or the research would be lost, "probably a dangerous path to go down".
Bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef corals in 2017, the second year of unprecedented back-to-back mass bleaching.  Credit: AAP"Australia has the opportunity to do the right thing by the Great Barrier Reef but also to provide a model of good governance for other countries grappling with this issue," Professor McDonald said.
Federal Environment Minister Melissa Price was contacted for comment.
Labor environment spokesman Tony Burke said: "We are the custodians of the planet’s most precious and most vulnerable environmental asset.
"If we win the election, then we would listen to the experts both on individual projects and the overall framework for protecting the Great Barrier Reef."
Greens spokeswoman on the Great Barrier Reef Larissa Waters noted that a Nature paper published last week found 89 per cent of new corals were not surviving.
"[That] made it clear restoration and other projects aren’t enough – there must be urgent action to reverse climate change," Senator Waters said.
"There should be an assessment framework for geoengineering experiments to ensure new problems aren’t being created."

Links

• Climate Policy: Governing geoengineering research for the Great Barrier Reef
• Geoengineering the Great Barrier Reef needs strong rules
• Impacts of stratospheric aerosol geoengineering strategy on Caribbean coral reefs
• The Dependency of People on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia
• Assessment and Promotion of the Great Barrier Reef's Human Dimensions Through Collaboration
• 'Shocking' coral spawning drop raises doubts over Great Barrier Reef's resilience
• These residents stopped a coal mine, made history and sent ripples through boardrooms around the world

Centre for Climate Safety - Mik Aidt

Photo Sebastiaan Jansen-MundayDoctors from across Australia gathered on 6 April 2019 in Hobart to declare a climate emergency.
The medical doctors, from various specialisations, called on Australia’s federal and state governments and councils to adequately respond to the climate chaos we are experiencing. They stated that anything less on the part of governments amounts to negligence.
“Declaring a Climate Emergency calls on governments at all levels to undertake an urgent re-evaluation of priorities, ending destructive, self-harming practices and pursuing actions that promote health and wellbeing for all. Doctors have a duty to care for human health and to alleviate suffering. We cannot be silent and watch governments continue to dismiss the threat posed by climate change and unhealthy environments to the health of their people.”
~ Dr Kristine Barnde, iDEA conference co-organiser and a member of Doctors for the Environment AustraliaDoctors in scrubs, surgical masks and stethoscopes gathered to issue the climate emergency declaration on 6 April 2019 at the Menzies Research Institute in Hobart. They had come together in Hobart to attend Doctors for the Environment Australia’s annual conference iDEA Conference 2019, which this year had the theme ‘Keeping The Lights On’, aiming to “empower medical professionals and medical students from across Australia and beyond to skill up, get motivated and to address the biggest challenge and opportunity facing doctors today — the human health impacts of the environment and climate change.”



Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA) is an independent organisation of medical doctors protecting health through care of the environment. They are supported by a Nobel laureate, recipients of the Australia of the Year award, and other health experts.

Appalled and frightened
“Doctors are appalled and frightened by the ongoing refusal of politicians to take necessary action.”
~ Dr Kristine Barnde, iDEA conference co-organiser and a member of Doctors for the Environment AustraliaConference co-organiser and DEA member Dr Kristine Barnden said, “Climate change is killing people and children are one of the groups most at risk. There is no time for games, and DEA is running a campaign urging health professionals to speak out on action on climate to protect our children now and into the future.”
“Knowing that climate change constitutes a public health crisis, knowing that solutions are available, knowing that we only have a short time to act to prevent run away climate change, doctors are appalled and frightened by the ongoing refusal of politicians to take necessary action. We must recognise climate change for the emergency that it is.”
Barnden noted that the change in the climate due to greenhouse gas emissions is accelerating, bringing with it more frequent and severe extreme weather events, an increase in infectious diseases, allergic and respiratory diseases, and the risk of global food shortages.
In a media release, the medical group quoted UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who has stated that, “If we do not change course by 2020, we risk missing the point where we can avoid runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences for people and all the natural systems that sustain us.”
“We are familiar with dealing with emergencies and know that disaster can be averted when emergencies are recognised early, and when the response is prompt. We know that pretending an emergency isn’t happening, or giving inappropriate or inadequate treatment, can only end in disaster. Human impact on the planet is now threatening the life support systems that we all depend on. Multiple scientific studies show a decline in many critical areas, such as biodiversity loss and declining fresh water availability on which our health and survival depends.”

Climate change policy in Australia is costing lives
The Medical Journal of Australia has said inaction on climate change policy in Australia is costing lives:
“We find that Australia is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change on health, and that policy inaction in this regard threatens Australian lives. In a number of respects, Australia has gone backwards and now lags behind other high income countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom. Examples include the persistence of a very high carbon-intensive energy system in Australia, and its slow transition to renewables and low carbon electricity generation.”Medical Journal of Australia – 29 November 2018Links

• Doctors declare a climate emergency and call on governments to support the move
• The MJA–Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: Australian policy inaction threatens lives
• Doctors for the Environment Australia
• DEA welcomes the ALP announcement on Climate Change and Health Strategy
• DEA welcomes the AMA’s call for environmental sustainability in health care
• It's not a future health threat. It's already here.
• Climate change is a political choice. Here’s why
• Concept of ‘climate emergency’ enters mainstream of society
• Centre for Climate Safety

Fairfax - Caitlin Fitzsimmons

Local councils could save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by shifting their fleets to electric vehicles, a study by ClimateWorks Australia suggests.
Project officer Claire Connell said more than half of new vehicles sold in Australia in 2017 were purchased by the government and corporate fleets so it was a significant opportunity.

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore's council has embraced electric cars in their fleet. Credit: Jessica Hromas"Local governments specifically have an explicit obligation to manage their assets in the best interests of their constituents," Ms Connell said. "A number have significant emissions reductions targets in place."
The research follows the federal opposition's announcement of its electric vehicle policy last week. Labor's plans include spending $100 million to support the rollout of charging stations around the country and a target for electric vehicles to make up half of all new car sales by 2030. A Labor government would also commit to an electric vehicle target of 50 per cent of new purchases and leases of passenger vehicles for the government fleet.
Transport emissions account for 18 per cent of Australia's total greenhouse gas emissions and that figure is rising, according to the Climate Council.The City of Sydney has embraced electric vehicles, with 19 Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-MiEV vehicles in its fleet, as well as 40 hybrid cars and 70 hybrid trucks. Lord Mayor Clover Moore said the council was waiting for electric versions of some larger vehicles such as garbage trucks to become available.
"By using electric and hybrid trucks and vehicles, the City reduced its fleet emissions by 26 per cent between 2010 and 2014, and we are on track to achieve our goal of zero increase in fleet emissions by June 2021," Cr Moore said.
"There are many advantages to moving to electric vehicles. They produce no tailpipe emissions, are quieter, cheaper to fuel and lower carbon if using renewable electricity.
"We know we are fast running out of time to take serious action on climate change, and transitioning to electric vehicles is one way we can reduce our emissions."
The ClimateWorks project engaged 43 local governments across Victoria over nine months, but Ms Connell said she believes councils across Australia have similar drivers. The report recommends a national capacity building program to give councils information and support to make the shift.
Ms Connell said the latest figures, from 2016, found the average emissions intensity of a petrol vehicle was 182 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre. The emissions intensity of electricity from the grid was generally less - in NSW, for example, electricity from the grid contributed 160 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre driven in an electric car.
This would improve as electric cars became more efficient and the electricity grid shifted to renewables.
The study analysed the councils' fleets -  which included hatchback and sedans, larger SUV vehicles, vans, mini-buses and small trucks, utes and small box trucks - and the actual usage patterns. The analysis looked at the total cost of ownership of switching to electric vehicles where an appropriate equivalent was available.
The analysis didn't include the cost of charging infrastructure because different councils planned to deal with this differently.
Some councils would see no financial benefit, the study found, while others would save money, depending on their usage patterns. One council that could switch to electric vehicles for hatchbacks, sedans and vans would save 1-3c per kilometre, based on owning the vehicles for six years, driving 20,000 kilometres a year and energy costs of 15c per kilowatt hour.

Links

• Is Bill Shorten in the driver's seat or just an electric dreamer?
• Coalition are the Luddites on our next great transport revolution
• Electric cars to replace petrol cars in next decade, conference told
• Motorists could pay to reach Labor target for electric cars
• Hewson, Steggall back launch of new electric vehicle
• Electric cars to take up half of market by 2030 under Shorten plan
• Australia in the slow lane as Coalition stalls on EV strategyAustralia in the slow lane as Coalition stalls on EV strategy

Washington Post - Mike Corder AP

Climate activists pose outside the Shell headquarters, rear, in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday April 5, 2019, prior to deliver a court summons to Shell in a court case aimed at forcing the energy giant to do more to rein in carbon emissions. (Mike Corder/Associated Press)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Climate activists delivered a court summons Friday to oil company Shell in a court case aimed at forcing it to do more to rein in carbon emissions.
Friends of the Earth Netherlands, one of the groups involved, said it wants a court in The Hague to order Shell to reduce its carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 compared to 2010 levels and to zero by 2050, in line with the Paris Climate Accord.
“Shell’s directors still do not want to say goodbye to oil and gas,” said the group’s director, Donald Pols. “They would pull the world into the abyss. The judge can prevent this from happening.”
The summons, more than 250 pages long and backed up by boxes of supporting documents, was wheeled into the headquarters on a trolley as a couple of hundred activists looked on.
The move comes a year after the Dutch branch of Friends of the Earth sent a letter to Shell’s CEO Ben van Beurden accusing the company of “breaching its legal duty of care” by causing climate damage across the globe.
In a statement, Shell outlined renewable energy projects it is involved in in the Netherlands and said that it agrees climate change action is necessary and that the company is “committed to playing our part.”
“We welcome constructive efforts to work together to find solutions to the challenge of climate change, but we do not believe the courtroom is the right venue to address the global climate challenge,” the company said.
The Shell case, which has more than 17,000 claimants, follows a groundbreaking ruling by a Hague court in 2015 that ordered the Dutch government to cut the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25% by 2020 from benchmark 1990 levels.
The new case is not seeking compensation; it focuses instead on pushing Shell to take more action to rein in emissions.
Roger Cox, a lawyer who initially represented environmental group Urgenda and is now leading the civil action against Shell, said the two cases are similar because they are based in part on a duty of care enshrined in Dutch law.
“And more specifically the duty to not create dangerous situations for others if these dangerous situations can reasonably be prevented,” he said. “So what we in fact are stating is that Shell is contributing to dangerous climate change because its emissions are not in line with what is needed.”

Links

• Climate Change: Top Lawyer Says Councils May Soon Be Liable For Climate Damage
• Environmental Groups Take France To Court Over Climate Change Inaction
• Trump’s Climate Policies Face 6 Big Legal Battles This Year
• Support Is Surging For Teens’ Climate Change Lawsuit
• Climate Change In Court
• Climate Change-Related Litigation Was Once Seen As A Joke, But It Could Soon Become Business Reality
• These Residents Stopped A Coal Mine, Made History And Sent Ripples Through Boardrooms Around The World
• Australia's Coal Future Under Threat As More Changes Hit Fossil Fuels Globally

Phys.org - University of Sussex

How energy use demands change through different milestones in life. Credit: HOPE ProjectIndividuals have as big a role to play in tackling climate change as major corporations but only if they can be encouraged to make significant lifestyle changes by effective government policy, a major new European study co-authored by a University of Sussex academic has found.
The study notes that voluntary lifestyle choices by well-meaning individuals would only achieve around half the required emission reductions needed to hit the 1.5 C Paris Agreement goal. But the authors suggest that Paris targets could be achieved if voluntary choices were combined with policies that target behavioural change, particularly around eating meat and using fewer cars and airplanes.
The study's authors say the international climate policy debate has so far focused mainly on technology and economic incentives, relegating behaviour change to a voluntary add-on. This is despite the fact behavioural change has the potential for far greater emission reductions than the political pledges made under the Paris Accord.
The study, written by academics from 11 institutions including the University of Sussex, investigated the preferences for reducing household emissions, responsible for about 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions. It involved hundreds of families in four European cities using a specially-designed simulation tool to indicate carbon and money savings from 65 lifestyle choices combined with in-depth surveys with household members.
It found public support for policy initiatives that encouraged more sustainable practices around food production but resistance to initiatives that restricted personal mobility and transport options. The study also found that ironically the areas where greatest lifestyle changes were required and the largest carbon footprints produced, such as aviation and changes to diet, had received the lowest policy attention to date.
Lead author Ghislain Dubois, founder of the TEC Conseil in France, said: "Our research proves that if supported by adequate policies, households can have a decisive contribution to the Paris agreement objectives. This is largely ignored by current climate policies and negotiations, which rely only on macro-economics and technology. We should dare envisaging and doing research on taboos like consumption reduction or sobriety. When you consider the impacts on CO2 emissions, but also on households' budgets and the potential co-benefits, it is worth it."
Professor Benjamin Sovacool, second author of the study and Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex, added: "Our study underscores the contradictions we all have in balancing climate change with other priorities. We want to fight climate change, but stick to eating meat and driving our cars. There are certain changes we can make voluntarily but beyond that we need policy to step in."
The study, published in the upcoming June edition of Energy Research and Social Science, found that the greater the potential actions have to reduce emissions, the less households were willing to implement them. In these areas "forced" solutions such as a considerably higher carbon tax on fuel and regulations encouraging food producers to reduce packaging or increase local and organic farming in addition to voluntary measures will be needed, the academics warn.
Carlo Aall, co-author of the study from the Western Norway Research Institute, said: "There is political room for taking a tougher stand on supporting economically and regulating household consumption to become more climate friendly. Meat consumption and long air trips in particular need to be addressed."
Alina Herrmann, co-author from the Heidelberg Institute for Global Health said: "Strikingly, people were very open to climate friendly solutions in the food and recycling sector. We have found strong support for less packaged food, more sustainable food production and moderate reduction of meat consumption in our study population. Many participants even wished for external support to make such sustainable choices easier for them."
However, in areas such as mobility, the authors recommend limiting the availability of greenhouse gas-intensive consumption through regulative instruments such bans, restrictions or increased taxes; balanced with making low-carbon alternatives more readily available.
Dr. Hermann added: "Changing mobility behaviour was seen as incredibly difficult. To gain acceptance for reduced mobility as part of societal transformation in the face of climate change, and entirely new public discourse would be needed."
Responses from the study revealed household carbon footprints are not static but can fluctuate significantly with major life events such as having children, experiencing illness or retiring.
The authors recommend that targeted interventions at these milestones could be highly effective in bringing about long-lasting change and suggested that intermediaries at these milestones, such as estate agents, car sales staff and retirement planners, could all play a much more active role in identifying carbon-reducing options.

Links

• Climate policies targeting household consumption and behavioral decisions are key to low-carbon futures
• Consumer food choices can help reduce greenhouse emissions contributing to climate change
• Video: Climate change—it (doesn't have to be) what's for dinner
• How important is reciprocity for climate policy?
• Climate-friendly labriculture depends on an energy revolution, study says
• Rapid global shift to renewable energies can save millions of lives
• Solving the e-waste challenge requires global action

Washington Post - Kayla Epstein

A view of the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway. (David Keyton/AP)Few places have served as a locus for the public’s anxiety about climate change as much as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
The seed ark, popularly known as the “Doomsday Vault,” is embedded deep in the permafrost of a northerly Norwegian island and stores nearly a million samples from around the world for safekeeping in the event of war, famine, disease and, yes, climate change.
It backs up gene banks around the globe, a fail safe for the fail safes.
It is supposed to be indestructible, the frigid landscape serving as a natural coolant for the genetic material it protects.
And yet, climate change has been profoundly affecting the region, causing permafrost to melt, avalanches to strike and, on one notable occasion, water to collect and freeze at the beginning of the tunnel to the vault.
That latter phenomenon led to a flurry of panicked headlines in 2017; on the Internet, where such events can take on an ominous significance, the pessimistic conclusion was that if the Doomsday Vault is doomed, so are we.
The vault is probably going to be okay. But its occasional troubles put a focus on a much bigger problem: Its home is undergoing rapid change thanks to the warming climate.
A report on climate change in the Svalbard archipelago released this year by the Norwegian Center for Climate Services and commissioned by the Norwegian Environment Agency states that “from 1971 to 2017, a warming of 3-5 degrees Celsius has been observed … with the largest increase in winter and the smallest in summer.” The estimated average temperature for Svalbard is -8.7 degrees Celsius.
“We know that the warming in this area has been very fast during the last five decades, seen in a global perspective,” said Inger Hanssen-Bauer of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, who was one of the editors of the study.
Svalbard’s glaciers are “losing more ice through melting and calving than they are accumulating through snowfall,” according to the report. “All of the well observed glaciers are shrinking.” The warming of the surrounding ocean “has halted sea ice from forming."
But the predictions for the future are even more stark. The report projects changes from a period of 1971-2000 until 2071-2100 based on various scenarios for global warming set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “Under medium to high scenarios for future climate emissions,” the annual air temperature will increase by approximately 10 degrees Celsius under high emissions and 7 degrees Celsius under medium emissions, scientists found.
That temperature increase will lead to drastic changes for the region, according to the report. Heavy rainfall will occur more frequently. Avalanches and mudslides will happen more often. The snow season will become shorter. In the high-emission scenario, near-surface permafrost is predicted to melt in coastal and low-altitude areas.
The report does contain a caveat. “Inadequate knowledge of the climate system’s sensitivity and of future natural climate variations, as well as limitations in the climate models, lead to large uncertainties in the projections even under a given emission scenario,” the scientists wrote. “It is still clear that reduced greenhouse gas emissions will lead to reduced changes in the physical climate.”
The Svalbard archipelago, about halfway between the mainland of Norway and the North Pole, is home to one of the northernmost human settlements on Earth, Longyearbyren. The town is a hub for Arctic explorers and scientists and home to the Global Seed Vault. The city has been experiencing anomalies and occasional disasters thanks to the changing climate.
Houses are cracking and shifting because the melting of the permafrost destabilizes their foundations, CNN reported. A 2015 avalanche killed two people and injured nine — the types of avalanches the Norwegian report say will increase in frequency if emissions aren’t brought under control.
The Arctic overall has been highly susceptible to climate change. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 2018 Arctic report card showed that “continued warming of the Arctic atmosphere and ocean are driving broad change in the environmental system in predicted and, also, unexpected ways.” NOAA showed that surface air temperatures in the Arctic were warming at “twice the rate relative to the rest of the globe,” among other concerning changes.
The IPCC has laid out stark projections for what catastrophes await the planet if global emissions are not curbed within the next few years. The problem is global in scale, and the proposed solutions can become mired in international politics.
If it’s hard to keep focus, just think of the Doomsday Vault.

Links

• Climate Change Could Thaw The Home Of Humanity's Doomsday Vault
• Why the world is storing so many seeds in the Doomsday Vault
• Climate in Svalbard 2100 (pdf)
• There's Way Too Little Ice Around Svalbard Right Now
• Threat Of Climate Change Is Forcing Norway To Drop Millions On Its Doomsday Vault
• Scientists Add 50,000 Seeds To Arctic Doomsday Vault Because Everything Is Awful
• The Doomsday Vault Isn't Flooded But We're All Still Going To Die
• Ancient Plants Reveal Arctic Summers Haven't Been This Hot In 115,000 Years
• In the deepest Arctic, sled dogs, polar bears and famed seed vault face melting snow and ice
• Snow in Florida? It’s just hail — and here’s why that’s not as strange as it sounds.
• The Arctic Ocean has lost 95 percent of its oldest ice — a startling sign of what’s to come
• A huge stretch of the Arctic Ocean is rapidly turning into the Atlantic. That’s not a good sign

Reuters - Melanie Burton

MELBOURNE - Australia’s QBE Insurance Group Ltd plans to stop offering new policies for thermal coal mines and coal-fired power stations to help encourage a low carbon economy and combat climate change.
A man waits in front of a QBE Insurance Group headquarters in central Sydney May 19, 2008. QBE Insurance Group Ltd, Australia's top insurer by premium income, raised its bid for smaller rival insurance Australia Group Ltd to $8.3 billion but said it thought the new and final offer would be rejected. REUTERS/Daniel Munoz (AUSTRALIA)The country’s third-largest insurer said it aims to phase out all direct insurance services for thermal coal customers by 2030, but will still invest in and insure metallurgical coal and oil and gas companies.
Fossil fuel divestment has gathered pace over the past few years as pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and universities have sold oil, gas and coal stocks, especially after the 2015 Paris climate agreement set a goal of phasing out the use of fossil fuels this century.
Eleven major re-insurers including Allianz, AXA SA, Swiss Re, Munich Re, Zurich have restricted underwriting for coal, according to Melbourne-based non-government organization Market Forces.
“We are acutely aware of the risks and opportunities that climate change presents for our customers and our business,” QBE said in a weekend statement.
From July 1, it will no longer offer any new direct insurance services for construction projects for thermal coal mines, coal-fired power stations or thermal coal transport infrastructure, it said.
QBE will also target zero direct investments from the thermal coal industry by July 1, while restricting any coal exposure to half a percent of total funds under management.
The insurer has been restructuring its business after 2017’s record annual loss when hurricanes swept the Atlantic and earthquakes rattled Mexico, selling its Latin American and some underperforming units.
Thermal coal is used primarily for heat, while metallurgical coal is typically used to produce steel.
An insurance division of BNP Paribas, France’s largest bank, said last month said it would no longer finance power generation companies where coal-fired power accounts for more than 30 percent of installed capacity.

Links

• QBE acts on climate change
• Why more insurance companies are taking an ethical stance against insuring coal
• Lloyd's warned over legal risks of underwriting a controversial coal mine project in Australia
• Could climate change make it harder to get insurance in Australia?
• Climate change on track to make world 'uninsurable': IAG
• Insurers act on climate change exposure

SBS News - Charlotte Lam

A new report shows environmental disasters linked to climate change are threatening the lives and futures of more than 19 million children in Bangladesh, including prompting many families to push their daughters into child marriages.



Climate change in Bangladesh could impact the lives of more than 19 million children, according to a new UNICEF report.
The humanitarian agency said on Friday that the country’s flat topography, dense population and weak infrastructure makes it “uniquely vulnerable to the powerful and unpredictable forces that climate change is compounding”.
The report author, Simon Ingram, said the danger was "flooding is extreme and it is almost on an annual basis”.
The lives and futures of more than 19 million children in Bangladesh are threatened by environmental disasters, according to a new report. APThe report, titled "Gathering Storm: Climate change clouds the future of children in Bangladesh", showed about 12 million children currently live in and around powerful river systems, which flow through Bangladesh and regularly burst their banks.
Another 4.5 million children live in coastal areas, which are regularly struck by powerful cyclones, including almost half a million Rohingya refugee children from neighbouring Myanmar - living in makeshift bamboo and plastic shelters.



A further 3 million Bangladeshi children live in farming communities, which are facing increasing periods of drought.
The report also found a link between climate change and child marriage, child labour and access to education is evident in various parts of Bangladesh.
"Climate change is undoubtedly increasing the number of children who are pushed into the workplace, where they miss out on an education and are terribly exposed to violence and abuse," UNICEF Bangladesh Child Protection specialist Kristina Wesslund said.
Rohingya Muslim girl Afeefa Bebi, holds her brother as doctors check her mother Yasmeen Ara at a community hospital in Kutupalong refugee camp, Bangladesh 2017. APBangladesh has one of the world's highest rates of child marriage, with nearly a third of girls married before the age of 15.
Child protection specialist Gyas Uddin agreed with the report's findings.
"Climate change makes people poorer and poverty is a major factor behind child marriage," he told AFP.
In 2007, a powerful cyclone killed nearly 4000 people and impacted hundreds of thousands more.
Bangladeshi children walk along streets submerged by rainwater in Old Dhaka city last year, after heavy monsoon rains flooded parts of the capital. EPAThe most recent flooding of the Brahmaputra River in 2017 damaged 50,000 tube wells, which impacted safe, drinking water and had almost 500 health clinics bursting at the seams with residents needing urgent medical treatment.
"This had an enormous effect not just in terms of displacing families and pushing them out of their homes,” Mr Ingram said, adding the “destruction that it caused to health facilities and to basic services like water and sanitation”.
UNICEF also said a change in climate was pushing poorer Bangladeshis from rural areas and into the capital Dhaka and other major cities for resources, where children's rights can be violated.
Rohingya Muslim women, who crossed over from Myanmar into Bangladesh, hold their sick children. APMr Ingram said there were already six million climate refugees in Bangladeshi cities, a number that could double by 2050.
Rising sea levels leading to unchecked saltwater intrusion also posed a threat to pregnant women, with the report showing an increased risk of medical conditions, including pre-eclampsia and hypertension, identified among mothers-to-be at the coast.

Links

• Millions of Bangladeshi children at risk from climate crisis, warns UNICEF
• Climate change threatens lives and futures of over 19 million children in Bangladesh
• Climate change threatens 19 million Bangladesh childrens’ lives, future: UNICEF report
• Climate change threat to millions of Bangladeshi children
• How climate change is forcing vulnerable children into sex trafficking
• Climate change blights children's lives in Bangladesh
• Climate Change Creates A New Migration Crisis For Bangladesh
• Bangladesh Kids Turn The Tide On Climate Change Aboard Floating Schools
• Government 'failing' on climate change: poll

World Economic Forum - Sean Fleming

Are we next?
Image: REUTERS/File Photo Ignorant, malign and evil. This is some of the unapologetically harsh criticism directed at climate change deniers by Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Her point is as simple as it is blunt: “Climate change undermines the enjoyment of the full range of human rights – from the right to life, to food, to shelter and to health. It is an injustice that the people who have contributed least to the causes of the problem suffer the worst impacts of climate change.”

           Image: NASA It is widely accepted that the Earth’s climate is in a near-constant state of flux. There have been seven ice age cycles, featuring the expansion and contraction of glaciers, over the last 650,000 years. The last major ice age ended approximately 11,000 years ago, ushering in our modern climate era, the Holocene. Since then, the climate has been mostly stable, although there was a Little Ice Age that took place between 1200 and 1850 CE.
But there’s more to climate change than the spread of glaciers and many once-mighty civilizations have been devastated by the effects of locally changing climate conditions.
The Mayan civilization in Mesoamerica lasted for some 3,000 years. Their empire was spread throughout the Yucatan Peninsula and modern-day Guatemala, Belize, parts of Mexico, and western Honduras and El Salvador. Agriculture was the cornerstone of Mayan civilization, with great cities being built as the population grew. Religion was an important part of Mayan life; sacrifice – including human sacrifice – was a regular ritual, intended to appease and nourish the gods and keep the land fertile.
However, somewhere around 900 CE, things started to go wrong for the Mayans. Overpopulation put too great a strain on resources. Increased competition for resources was bringing the Maya into violent conflict with other nations. An extensive period of drought sounded the death-knell, ruining crops and cutting off drinking water supplies.
They were not the only ancient people catastrophically caught out by climate change.
More than 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia – the area currently made up of Iraq, north-east Syria and south-east Turkey – the Akkadian empire ruled supreme. Until a 300-year-long drought quite literally turned all their plans to dust. It was part of a pattern of changing climate conditions in the Middle East around 2,200 BCE that was constantly disrupting life and up-ending emerging empires.
When the effects of drought began to be felt, people would leave the stricken areas and migrate to more abundant ones. These mass migration events, however, increased the pressure on remaining resources, leading to yet more problems.
The iconic Angkor Wat temple is a reminder of the prowess of another of history’s lost civilizations – the Khmer empire of south-east Asia, which flourished between 802 and 1431 CE. It too was brought down by drought, interspersed with violent monsoon rains, against the backdrop of a changing climate.
Even the Viking settlers of Greenland, in the far north Atlantic, are believed to have been affected by climate change. Some 5,000 settlers made the island their home for around 500 years. But they may have had their way of life disrupted by climate change. Temperatures dropped, reducing substantially the productivity of their farms and making it harder to raise livestock. They adapted their eating habits, turning their attention to the sea as a source of food. But life on Greenland became unbearably difficult, leading to the eventual abandonment of the island colony.
The natural cycle of climate change is an ongoing and unavoidable part of life. But history seems to be telling us that when past civilizations have overstretched themselves or pushed their consumption of natural resources to the brink, the effects of climate change soon become amplified. With dire consequences for those caught up in it.
Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, increasing amounts of polluting gases have been pumped into the atmosphere, triggering an unprecedented rate of warming. According to the IPCC, human activity has caused around 1°C of global warming (above pre-industrial levels). The likely range is between 0.8°C and 1.2°C. Between 2030 and 2052, global warming is likely to hit a 1.5°C increase.
That increase of 1.5°C could put between 20% and 30% of animal species on the fast track to extinction. If the planet warms by an average 2°C the damage will be even worse. For the human population, one of the threats climate change poses is rising sea levels and eight of the world’s 10 largest cities are in coastal locations.
Another is the risk of climate-driven drought leading to mass migration events similar to those seen thousands of years ago. The Climate & Migration Coalition has warned that countries caught up in armed conflict or civil war are particularly vulnerable to famine in the event of drought. The Horn of Africa, home to Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia is an area that has been hit hard by both man-made conflict and climate change. Around 13 million people there face serious food shortages.
In volatile parts of the world, it is exceptionally difficult to address the challenges of drought and famine; getting aid to people in a conflict zone is fraught with difficulty and danger. This can make the effects more profound and longer-lasting, which will, in turn, increase the likelihood of large numbers of people uprooting themselves in search of somewhere they can live.
The challenge facing our world due to climate change is something that should not be underestimated. But neither is it cause for despondency. Because unlike the Mayans, the Mesopotamians and other ancient civilizations, here in the 21st century, we are in a position to do something constructive.
The Paris Agreement was one significant milestone in the fight back against climate change. Signed by 195 members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, it has put in place a serious of goals and commitments to keep the increase in average global temperatures below 2°C. Despite a high-profile decision to leave the Paris Accord, there is now a growing movement in the US political sphere to rejoin. There is also talk of the European Union refusing to sign trade deals with countries that are not signatories to the agreement.

Links

• Climate change denial is evil, says Mary Robinson
• Climate change: How do we know?
• The Maya Empire
• Collapse of Earliest Known Empire Is Linked to Long, Harsh Drought
• Angkor Wat’s Collapse From Climate Change Has Lessons for Today
• The Fate of Greenland's Vikings
• IPCC Special Report: Global Warming Of 1.5 ºC
• UN Atlas Of The Oceans 2002-2016
• Climate, drought and conflict in the Horn of Africa
• This is how our changing climate could increase the risk we face from hurricanes
• Jakarta is slowing sinking into the Earth
• From Sweden to India, school climate strikes have gone global