Drum Interview: Climate Change Isn't Going To Wait For Australia

ABC - Amy Sherden 

Video: Lord Deben tells The Drum Australia is going to the Paris talks with one of the least ambitious emission reduction targets.

The UK's head climate advisor has slammed Australia's efforts to reduce green house gas emissions, labelling targets "sad" and a "disgrace".
John Gummer, Lord Deben, the chairman of the UK's Committee on Climate Change, has warned that Australia currently looks like it's on the outside of the international community on climate change.
"Everyone else is willing to help but for goodness sake, you've already done less than other people," he told ABC's The Drum.
"You didn't take on anything like the burden of other advanced countries, so don't pretend you're doing better. You're not, and everyone else outside knows that."
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull recently told ABC Radio that Australia's 26-28 per cent reduction from emission levels in 2005 is comparable to similarly situated countries.
But Lord Deben rejects the argument that Australia is doing well in its reductions on a per capita basis.
"Britain has the fastest growing population in Europe … but what we have said is whatever the population is, whatever the problem is, we have got to do our part."
He dismissed arguments that Australia is a special case as its economy is reliant on the export of emission-rich products.
"All right, sitting there saying that you're a special case, the fact of the matter is climate change doesn't do special cases."
"Climate change isn't going to wait for Australia."
Lord Deben says proposals coming from South Africa are better than those being put forward by Australia.
"Australia's promising something much less than the US, wildly less than any European country, less than Mexico, less than Brazil, less than China."
"Australia's going to go to the Paris talks with one of the least ambitious targets."
Deben, who repeatedly called for Australia's leadership on climate change under Tony Abbott's prime ministership, says a return to the consensus position should be possible with the change at the top of the Coalition.
"Conservatives around the world are of course very much in the lead of battling against climate change."
"I think that the world would be extremely pleased if Australia showed that it was thinking seriously about trying to bring the parties together, to find a common view."
Lord Deben says that Australia could make more efficient use of energy and pursue opportunities in solar and wind power.
Deben also recommended that the Turnbull Government reintroduce an independent climate change advisory committee with Professor Tim Flannery as chair.
"The extremes of weather, which you are experiencing here in Australia, are going to get worse and worse."
"The science is now absolute. Nobody really in the world disagrees with the fact that climate change is happening and human beings are causing it."
"If we don't work together to do something about it, then frankly we are going to find ourselves in a really serious position."
Australia is due to attend the UN Climate Change Summit in Paris in December this year.

Amy Sherden is a producer at ABC News 24.

Blocked NSW Climate Report Backed Big Emission Cuts, Warned Of Extreme Weather

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

NSW coal-fired power plants are major sources of emissions. Photo: Rob Homer

Australia risks being left with "stranded" fossil fuel assets and missing out on investment in new technologies if the country's climate change actions are less ambitious than other nations, according to a report blocked by the Baird government.
The report was prepared by the Office of Environment as NSW's submission to a Federal Government inquiry into what Australia's post-2020 carbon cutting target should be. It did not make it past Premier Mike Baird's office but was obtained by Fairfax Media under freedom of information laws.
While not proposing a specific target for greenhouse gas reduction, the submission recommends Australia take into account those of major trading partners and prepare a minimum goal that could be increased if others also make deeper cuts. It cited as an example the Climate Change Authority's recommended 40-60 per cent reduction range on 2000 levels by 2030.

Infigen's Capital Wind Farm near Bungendore, New South Wales. The state will lose economic opportunities if the new energy economy isn't embraced, says Greens climate spokesman Jeremy Buckingham. Photo: Bloomberg

It also suggested the continued use of 2000 as the base year as it would be more "transparent" and "easier to communicate to the Australian community". That proposal is in contrast to the Abbott and now Turnbull government's approach, which has been to shift the base year for its 2030 goal to 2005.
The federal government's pledge that it will take to the Paris climate summit next month is for Australia to aim to reduce emissions by 26-28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030, a target that converts to about 19 per cent when compared with 2000 levels.
The US is aiming for a 28 per cent cut on 2005's carbon pollution but would seek to reach that goal five years earlier than Australia, the submission notes.
"If Australia sets an emissions reduction target that is low in ambition while others set targets that are higher in ambition, there is a risk that [Australia's] fossil fuel reserves may become 'stranded assets' and the value of these assets may devalue," the report said.
Without "significant reductions" in global emissions, NSW alone would face a range of extreme weather, including maximum temperatures rising 3 degrees or more between now and 2070, it said.
Severe fire weather in spring would also increase bushfire risk and reduce the opportunity for hazard reduction burning, while fewer cold nights would hurt natural ecosystems, snow tourism and some agriculture.
South-eastern Australia has experienced a record-breaking heat wave to start October that helped fan a bushfire near Melbourne that had been lit to reduce fuel ahead of what is expected to be a difficult and long fire season.
A spokesman for Mr Baird declined to say why his government did not submit the submission to its federal counterparts.
"The submission was broadly in line with NSW Government thinking, but the emissions reduction target was a federal matter and the state's role was instead to implement strategies for adaptation and complementary strategies like energy efficiency and attracting renewable energy investment," a spokesman for Environment Minister Mark Speakman said, noting most other states did not make submissions.
Penny Sharpe, Labor's spokeswoman for Planning, Environment & Heritage, said a failure to act on climate change would hit the state economically, environmentally and socially.
"It beggars belief that the NSW Government as guardians of Australia's most populous state with the highest per capita carbon emissions would ignore the advice of its own agencies and choose not to make a submission to the Commonwealth," Ms Sharpe said.
"This head-in-the-sand approach from the Baird Government is risky and irresponsible," she said.
NSW Greens climate spokesperson Jeremy Buckingham said it was an "abysmal" decision to block the report.
"The report simply recognises the reality in a carbon-constrained world, fossil fuels are stranded assets and that NSW will lose economic opportunities if we do not embrace the new energy economy", he said.
"Premier Baird has a choice to make – either run with the dinosaurs trying to block out the significant political and technological changes occurring, or embrace the future and make NSW the booming renewable energy economy."

China Mulls New Coal Curbs That Would Limit Emissions But Dent Commodity Demand

WA Today - Philip Wen and Peter Hannam

China's coal industry faces challenges from multiple fronts. Photo: Bloomberg

• China's climate surprise

China is considering aggressive new curbs on coal consumption as it accelerates efforts to transform its economy and tackle climate change, moves that would hurt Australia's export revenue and place new mines in doubt.

There will be no growth in coal or steel demand in China – in fact significant declines.
Ross Garnaut, professor of economics at the University of Melbourne

A mandatory nationwide cap on coal use is among the likely initiatives to be unveiled in the Communist Party's 13th five-year plan, a key economic planning blueprint slated for release next year, sources familiar with the discussions said.

China's property boom is flagging, with new starts down 17 per cent this year. Photo: Tomohiro Ohsumi

"The issue is how to define the cap, and how to allocate the cap among the different sectors and provinces," said Teng Fei, a senior climate change academic at Beijing's Tsinghua University, and a member of China's negotiating team travelling to Paris for the climate summit next month.
The current five-year plan only provides "aspirational targets" for coal consumption in selected cities and provinces. A mandatory cap – targeting both carbon emissions and the notorious smog blanketing many of China's major cities – would also likely see the nation's coal imports, down 31 per cent this year, plummet further.
A smooth shift to a more service and consumption-based economy would aid the pollution fight at home but also help limit global warming by capping China's carbon emissions well before the 2030 goal pledged by Beijing.
For Australia, though, the potential loss of one of its largest markets for thermal coal would send coal and other commodity prices lower, cut revenue for state and federal budgets, and raise further doubts about the viability of major new coal mines such as Watermark on the Liverpool Plains and Queensland's Galilee Basin.
Evidence that the shift is already underway include a 17 per cent dive in housing construction starts so far in 2015 as the government seeks a controlled deflation of a bubble in the domestic property market. Apartment prices in large Chinese cities often exceed those in Australia by some margin.
The sector accounts for almost one-sixth of the economy, fanned by property prices that can rival or exceed those in Australian cities even though average incomes remain a fraction of those of Australians.
The building binge included  adding about 20 per cent more than the entire floor space in Britain  in China last year alone, said Jiang Kejun, a research professor with the Energy Research Institute, a think tank under the powerful National Development and Reform Commission.
Even with power demand basically flat this year, China continues to add almost 1 gigawatt of new coal-fired generating capacity – equivalent to a large power station in Australia – to the grid each week.
Professor Jiang, who is also a government climate change adviser, told Fairfax Media planners are considering to slapping a ban on new coal-fired capacity: "Now we are just talking about this in the new five-year plan – whether we go to zero new coal-fired power plants."
Even without an order from the top, construction must slow. "They will automatically stop," he said. "There is no market, they are dying."
Tim Buckley, a former Citi analyst now with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said China's coal-fired power plants were operating at less than 50 per cent capacity with average hours of operation down more than 9 per cent in the first seven months of 2015.
"It'd be crazy of them not to [ban net new plants]", Mr Buckley said. "I'm amazed they haven't done it already."
China's economy is likely to grow 6.8 per cent in 2015, its slowest since 1990, and ease further to 6.3 per cent next year, the International Monetary Fund said this week. That's down from the double-digit growth rates earlier this decade that helped trigger an investment boom in Australia's mining sector.
China buys just over one third of Australia's exports, with iron ore accounting for about $50.6 billion in sales last year and coal $8.3 billion, according to Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade data.
Ross Garnaut, professor of economics at the University of Melbourne, flagged the possibility of a sharper-than-expected slowdown with absolute falls in investment in a recent report on the Chinese economy. (See his chart below on China's rising coal demand.)

"The new model of economic growth involves major adjustment for the Australian resources industries if things go smoothly in China," Professor Garnaut said. "These are immense changes in China, and it would not be surprising if there are some large bumps in the road."
"There will be no growth in coal or steel demand in China – in fact significant declines – for the foreseeable future, while increased supply capacity is being added in exporting countries," he said.
"In the long term, growth in demand outside China will help the adjustment in China for iron ore, but not for thermal coal."
Global commodity prices have tumbled along with China's waning growth, dropping below the lowest point during the global financial crisis in 2007-08, a chart from the Reserve Bank of Australia showed this week:

Now 'Right Moment' For Carbon Tax, IMF Chief Christine Lagarde Says

ABC

Photo: The EU chief says now is the right time for a carbon tax. (AAP: Dean Lewins)

The time is right for governments to introduce taxes on carbon emissions, which would help fight global warming and raise badly needed revenue, IMF chief Christine Lagarde says.
"It is just the right moment to introduce carbon taxes," Ms Lagarde said at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Lima, Peru.
The issue is in the spotlight two months from a key United Nations conference in Paris tasked with delivering a comprehensive carbon-cutting pact.
Besides discouraging pollution, Ms Lagarde said, taxing greenhouse gas emissions would have the added bonus of helping governments boost their revenues at a time when many countries have dipped heavily into their "fiscal buffers" to get through a prolonged rough patch for the global economy.
"Finance ministers are looking for revenues. That's the fate of finance ministers," she said.
"But it's particularly the case at the moment because many have already used a lot of their fiscal buffers... and are always in need of some fiscal buffers in order to fight the next crisis."
Ms Lagarde urged governments to tax carbon emissions rather than rely on emissions trading, a competing system already in place in Europe in which governments essentially issue permits to pollute that can then be traded on an open market.
"I know that a lot of people would rather do emissions trading systems, but we believe that carbon taxation would be a lot better," she said.
Australia scrapped its carbon tax in July last year. The Government has a target of generating 23.5 per cent of the country's electricity from renewable sources by 2020.
Ms Lagarde said revenues from carbon taxes could contribute to rich nations' funding target of $US100 billion ($139 billion) a year by 2020 to help poorer nations fight the impacts of climate change.
The world was still $US38 billion short of that target last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a new report.
Ms Lagarde said it was also the "right moment" to eliminate energy subsidies, which the IMF says will cost the world $US5.3 trillion this year — 6.5 per cent of the global economy.

One Quarter Of The World Will Be Powered By Renewable Energy By 2020

IFL Science - Robin Andrews

Photo credit: lexaarts/Shutterstock

Climate change action has just been given an official round of applause: the International Energy Agency (IEA) has declared that over 26% of the world’s energy supply will come from renewable energy sources by the end of the decade.
U.S. President Obama recently made a trip to Alaska to highlight the effect that man-made (anthropogenic) climate change is having on the planet. Unfortunately, with climate change deniers placed in key political positions, and armed with a well-funded, relentless campaign of misinformation, attempts for the U.S. to act on climate change – without the President resorting to using executive action – are frequently obstructed by Congress.
Despite this depressing situation involving one of the world’s largest producers of carbon emissions, the IEA is confident that a quarter of the entire world will be powered by clean, renewable energy sources by 2020. The world’s foremost nonpartisan advisory body on energy describes this as a “remarkable shift in a very limited period of time,” adding in the report’s executive summary that “renewable electricity expanded at its fastest rate to date in 2014 and accounted for more than 45% of net additions to world capacity.”
This remarkable juxtaposition between American obstructionism and this prediction appears to be mostly due to the government policy of various nations across the globe to take mandated action on energy policy and climate change. The most recent prominent example of this is Sweden, whose government took the laudable step of planning to become the world’s first fossil fuel-free nation through legislative action.
According to the IEA, by 2020, the world’s total generation of energy through renewables could satisfy the demand of Brazil, China and India, three of the most populous nations on Earth. The organization claims that government policies are driven by the need to have energy security – generating enough energy for their country’s demand, and reducing their reliance on importing energy from volatile regions.
In addition to this, the genuine desire to reduce local pollution and combat climate change appears to be gathering pace: Government-funded incentives to produce more renewable energy-generating power stations and increasing the tax on carbon-emitting power sources are on the uptick.
Onshore wind is leading the global surge in renewable energy production, accounting for over a third of the observed capacity and generation spike. Solar power accounts for another third, and hydroelectric power produces a fifth of new renewable power generation. The cost of constructing renewable energy power stations, wind turbines and solar panels is also decreasing in the medium term.
China, currently holding the ignominious title of the world’s largest producer of carbon emissions, is actually leading the pack here: They are responsible for 40% of global renewable capacity growth – enough to power the United Kingdom three times over. A recent joint agreement with the U.S. on climate change is, despite its record, changing global perception of China’s efforts to deal with global warming. There is, of course, a long way to go, but this report is welcome news in the lead up to the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference that's being held in Paris at the end of November.