Fraser Resigns Climate Change Authority Chair

Sydney Morning Herald

Bernie Fraser, chair of the Climate Change Authority, has resigned.
Photo: Alex Ellinghausen / Fairfax

The chair of the Abbott government's climate change advice agency, Bernie Fraser, has resigned without explanation.
It comes less than a month after Mr Fraser issued a strong rebuke to Abbott government over its justifications of its post-2020 greenhouse emissions targets.
A statement issued by the Climate Change Authority late on Tuesday said Mr Fraser, a respected former Reserve Bank governor, had quit as chair.
"The authority members thank Mr Fraser for his enormously valuable contribution to the authority's work in providing independent expert advice to the Australian government and Parliament on climate change," it said.
"Arrangements have been made to ensure the authority's work will continue uninterrupted."
No further explanation was provided. It is understood Mr Fraser had a difficult relationship with Environment Minister Greg Hunt.
Fairfax Media understands Mr Fraser announced his decision on Tuesday after an all-day meeting of the authority.
Many of his colleagues are believed to be deeply saddened by his departure. He is not believed to have quit due to personal problems such as a health issue.
A spokeswoman for the authority said Mr Fraser did not wish to comment on his resignation.
The government sought to abolish the authority last year but was blocked in the Senate.
In September last year Mr Fraser said morale at his agency had been hit hard by the government's attempt to cull it.
"It's understandably having a pretty devastating effect," he said.
He said even with some staff departures, the authority retained a "core capacity" to help the government develop a policy to restore bipartisan support for renewable energy.
But Mr Fraser said despite this "we have not been invited" to assist the government on the issue.
In a statement late on Tuesday, Mr Hunt thanked Mr Fraser for his work.
"He has had an outstanding career in public service, which I deeply respect and acknowledge," he said.
"In particular, I thank Mr Fraser for his assistance with the crossbench in the passage of the Emissions Reduction Fund."
The authority had urged the government to impose extra scrutiny on polluters to ensure that, under that fund, billions of taxpayer dollars are not spent on emissions cuts that would have occurred anyway.
Mr Fraser was an outspoken advocate of renewable energy and climate change action. In a strongly worded statement last month he directly contradicted government claims about emissions targets it would take to global climate talks in Paris later this year.
In the statement, Mr Fraser said Prime Minister Tony Abbott government's assertion that its emissions cuts were akin to the United States were incorrect, and in fact Australia's targets put the nation "at or near the bottom" of comparable countries.
He said on the basis of the government's current targets, Australia "would slip further behind the efforts being made by comparable countries and likely face large catch-up adjustments down the track".
Mr Fraser said Labor's proposed emissions trading scheme does not equate to a new carbon tax, contrary to the government's characterisation.
The government intends to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere by 26-28 per cent by 2030, based on 2005 levels.

France's Hollande Says Risk Climate Talks Could Fail

Reuters

French President Francois Hollande warned on Monday that climate change talks in Paris later this year could fail especially if the issue of financing for emerging nations was not resolved.
The United Nations said on Sept. 4 that talks were on track for the Nov. 30-Dec. 11 summit after a week of negotiations in Bonn made progress in clarifying options about everything from cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to raising aid to developing nations.
"Good intentions are there, but we are still far away from a legally binding agreement and financing that is up to the levels needed," Hollande told a news conference. "There is even a risk of failure."
Almost 200 governments agreed in 2010 that a 2 degree Celsius rise was the maximum allowable to avert the heaviest impact of climate change, including floods, droughts and rising sea levels. About 100 developing nations favour a tougher ceiling of 1.5 degrees.
The plans submitted so far to the United Nations by about 60 nations represent 70 percent of world emissions and are deemed too weak to keep temperatures below the agreed ceiling of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times needed to avoid the worst effects of warming.
Some emerging nations do not want to commit themselves until they are assured that developing nations will receive $100 billion per year from 2020 to adapt to the impact of climate change.
Hollande said France would focus over the next three months on firming up assurances on this sum.
"It is the key. There has to be a pre-accord on the question of financing so that leaders come to Paris knowing there is certainty we will be able to conclude," Hollande said.
"If we don't conclude, and there are no substantial measures to ensure the transition, it won't be hundreds of thousands of refugees in the next 20 years, it will be millions."
Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who hosted some 60 countries in the French capital on Monday to add impetus to the negotiations, said he would convene a larger ministerial meeting by mid-November to ensure that much of the work was completed before the Paris summit.

Climate Change: Refugee Crisis

The Guardian - Craig Bennett

Failure to act on climate change means an even bigger refugee crisis. Global warming does not cause the conflicts that have caused mass movement of people, but it would be wrong to say it does not contribute.

Refugees and migrants wait to pass the borders from the northern Greek village of Idomeni, to southern Macedonia, on 7 September 2015. Photograph: Giannis Papanikos/AP

As I looked in on my own children sleeping safely last Thursday night before I went to bed, I did so with added poignancy as I reflected that this was something Abdullah Kurdi was not able to do. I’m sure millions of parents of young children right across Europe have felt similar emotions these last few days.
We’re all human, and so it’s perhaps not surprising that it takes a single photograph and an individual’s story to shake a society, all too belatedly, into glimpsing at one horrific aspect of Europe’s refugee crisis and demanding action.
But if we really want to reduce the future suffering of millions of refugees, and politicians want to avoid more shameful paralysis in the years ahead, we also need to look at the bigger picture.
Armed conflict will always be a risk in a world with oppressive dictators, terrorist groups, ideological extremism, the militarisation of sensitive regions by world powers, and an arms trade on the constant look out for new business. All of these factors, and more, are behind the appalling conflict in Syria, and the reason Europe is now struggling to cope with tens of thousands of refugees.

Global warming contributed to Syria's 2011 uprising, scientists claim

But it would seem that one of the key triggers for the 2011 Syrian uprising was the 2006 to 2010 drought, the most severe on record in this fertile region, itself probably caused or exacerbated by climate change.
As the abstract of an academic paper published this March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences puts it: “There is evidence that the 2007−2010 drought contributed to the conflict in Syria. It was the worst drought in the instrumental record, causing widespread crop failure and a mass migration of farming families to urban centres.
“Century-long observed trends … strongly suggest that anthropogenic forcing has increased the probability of severe and persistent droughts in this region. We conclude that human influences on the climate system are implicated in the current Syrian conflict”.
Scientists have similarly suggested that climate change may have played a role in the drought in north Africa that fuelled food price rises ahead of the Arab Spring, while back in 2007, a UN report concluded that climate change and environmental degradation was a key trigger in the conflict in Darfur a few years earlier.
To be clear; there will always be a multitude of drivers behind of social unrest and armed conflict. It would be wrong to say climate change “caused” these conflicts, but equally the evidence suggests it would be wrong to say it didn’t play a contributing role. And, if this is what is possible when average global temperatures have risen less than 1C, then goodness help future generations if/when it reaches 2C, 4C or even 6C.
In these circumstances, mass migration will be occurring in many regions of the world, with or without armed conflict. In 2014, the World Bank reported that climate change is going to lead to far more heat-waves and drought, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, exacerbating crop failure, food and water shortages, conflict and dislocation of people. Right now, Baghdad has eight extreme heat days a year. With 2C global warming they say there will be 90 extreme heat days. With 4C warming, over 115. It is a similar story for Amman, Damascus, Beirut, Riyadh.

Friends of the Earth CEO Craig Bennett: 'Now is the time to listen to ordinary people again'

The failure of the global community, and principally the rich countries, to tackle climate change means we are still on trajectory to these sort of temperatures.
This is why climate adaptation – action to reduce the vulnerability of ecological, social and economic systems to adverse effects of climate change – is now such a hot topic in the international climate talks. This is also why the countries that will suffer the worst impacts of climate change (predominantly the poorer countries) are quite rightly demanding at least $200bn a year in new and additional public finance from richer countries to help adapt.
But with or without climate adaption schemes, it would be naïve in the extreme to assume millions of people suffering the worst effects of climate change aren’t going to want to move, and morally bankrupt to deny them this possibility if they’ve contributed next to nothing to the causes. Throw armed conflict back into the mix, and the problems currently being experienced in Budapest or Calais are far from the full extent of the problem.
There are no simple solutions, but rich countries should be providing the financing and other assistance right now to help vulnerable countries and communities adapt to climate change while doing much more to cut greenhouse emissions, by investing in energy efficiency and clean energy, and leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

The nine green policies killed off by the Tory government

Sadly, in the past few months, the UK government has moved in the wrong direction as it’s torn up a long list of climate policies that have been put in place over many years, while at the same time championing brand new fossil fuel infrastructure in the form of fracking.
People from across the political spectrum have come together in the last week to demand a much stronger response from David Cameron to the refugee crisis, and rightly so.
But if the government continues to move backwards on climate change, then we should get ready for a much bigger refugee crisis before very long.