Lethal Heating: 04/11/16

11/04/2016

Great Barrier Reef: David Attenborough Ignores Politics And Appeals To The Heart

The Guardian - Gay Alcorn

Documentarian's message rings especially loud for Australians, who have the privilege and duty to look after this natural wonder

The reef surrounding Heron Island as seen in Great Barrier Reef with David Attenborough. Photograph: Mark Tipple/BBC/Atlantic Productions/Mark Tipple

"Do we really care so little about the Earth on which we live that we don't wish to protect one of its greatest wonders from the consequences of our behaviour?"
At the very end of Sir David Attenborough's three-part documentary on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the 89-year-old asks this simple question, in his polite way, not pointing fingers at anyone in particular, just wondering.
It is all that has gone before that gives his question such force. We have seen the remarkable, beautiful and wondrous reef in a way that makes political spinning over its health and future seem hollow.
We have seen the reef, but we have also felt it. The wonder of the once-a-year synchronised coral spawning, millions of sperm and eggs shooting into the ocean. The extraordinary sight of coral polyps battling each other in territorial wars.
We have felt the effort of 100kg green turtles hauling themselves onto the sands of Raine Island in north Queensland after 40 years at sea, there to lay eggs in the same place they hatched themselves. We can sense how every creature – every polyp, crab, fish, manta ray and shark – depends on every other.

Nobody imagined in those days that the reef could be degraded, even disappear, in one man's lifetime

At the end of this series, whether you're a fan of nature documentaries or not, you will have learnt things, sure, but you will have witnessed and felt magical things.
Attenborough's Great Barrier Reef has already been broadcast in the UK, but the first episode screened in Australia on Sunday on the ABC. There is a special poignancy watching it here, because Australia is the reef's home and we are its guardians.
The opening episode is about the reef itself, how the 2,300km chain of coral reefs and islands formed between 10,000 and 14,000 years ago towards the end of the ice age. Water flooded the continental shelf and what remained was shallow and warm enough to be perfect for coral, the heart of this underwater city.
The local Indigenous people living near Cairns have told through music and dance a similar story about how the reef was born for thousands of years.
Attenborough is an old man now, and one of his themes is time and change. Sixty years ago, dressed in little more than swimming shorts, flippers and a snorkel, he first explored the reef, and maintains that the "unforgettable beauty" of that experience remains the most magical moment in his career.
The black and white footage of that adventure is nostalgic, even innocent. Nobody imagined in those days that the reef could be degraded, even disappear, in one man's lifetime.
Time has brought technological advances that allow Attenborough and his crew to explore the reef, as he tells us often, like never before. Down he goes in an explorer submarine – a Triton submersible – to remote corners of the reef rarely, if ever, filmed. The footage is as beautiful as you will ever see, the narration very Attenborough with its mix of information and drama.
After laying "one of nature's great wonders" before us, Attenborough uses the third episode to outline the threats to the reef. Some of these, like cyclones, are natural events and the reef has proven extraordinarily resilient to many periods of exposure and regeneration over thousands of years.
That's the critical difference this time. Climate change is wreaking havoc because about 30% of the carbon dioxide we pour into the atmosphere is absorbed in the oceans. The rising temperatures and increased acidity it causes is happening too fast for the reef to cope. In the last 30 years, almost half the coral has disappeared.
"The greatest concern now is that we might lose the reef altogether," Attenborough says.
The scientists he meets are passionate and committed, doing all they can to protect and reef and its inhabitants. It has got to this: scientists at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in north-east Queensland are desperately trying to selectively breed a new kind of coral they hope might be able to withstand the worst effects of climate change. Perhaps we could place this laboratory coral created on the reef to regenerate areas that have died. There's something so sad about this well-intentioned scramble. As one scientist says: "This is really a last resort option."
Attenborough doesn't get into the politics of climate change, either global or local.
He doesn't analyse the Australian government's support for coalmines, especially the Indian company Adani's enormous Carmichael mine in Queensland, and its potential threat to the reef.
He doesn't get into the need for ambitious renewable energy targets or which is best method of reducing carbon emissions.
And his series came too late to capture the latest severe coral bleaching in the north of the barrier reef marine park, a result of warming temperatures.Attenborough's gift is to take us beyond politics, to what matters.
It is an especially loud message for Australians, who have the privilege and duty to look after this "eco-system like no other".
"The Great Barrier Reef is in grave danger," Attenborough says. If temperatures continue to rise at the present rate it will be gone with in decades. What was once unthinkable is now happening on our watch. At the end of this series – perhaps Attenborough's last big on-the-road documentary – he says without hyperbole, "That would be a global catastrophe."

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Road Map Points Way To Stable Climate Policy

Fairfax - Tony Wood*

The time is right for a bipartisan approach to climate including three steps to curb major emitters, writes Tony Wood.

After a lot of policy missteps a bipartisan approach on emissions is possible. Getty Images

Australian climate change politics helped destroy several political leaders and at least one government over the past decade. As a result, neither main political party has a compelling climate change policy and the issue is not shaping as a big one in the 2016 election.
It's a depressing scenario, but the moment may be ripe for a real, bipartisan approach. We got close in 2009, then Tony Abbott replaced Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal Party leader.
Both parties support the headline objectives: the 2020 emissions reduction target, deeper cuts beyond 2020 and the longer-term global goal of avoiding the worst impacts of dangerous climate change.
The immediate problem is that recent history so far precludes the best policy – a broad-based price on carbon. Neither side will go there after "axe the tax" was so successful in 2013. The central element of the Coalition government's Direct Action policy is a fund to purchase emissions reductions under contracts. From July, the policy will be supported by a safeguard mechanism that sets limits on emissions for Australia's 140 or so highest-emitting plants and facilities. The good news is that current projections indicate the 2020 target will be met under this policy. The harder task is meeting the 2030 target. The government proposes that continuing the emissions reduction fund along with other policies, some still in the formative stage, will reach it. But the lack of detail and a clear link to the overall target means this is not yet a credible and bankable policy.
Labor, by contrast, remains committed to emissions trading and to providing 50 per cent of electricity from renewables. It has yet to commit to a post-2020 target. In the short term, reverting to a cap and trade scheme, while it is the best policy, is another flip-flop, and probably politically toxic at present. Having been fatally wounded in 2013, Labor won't want to revisit the "great big tax" territory in a hurry.
Whoever wins the 2016 election can expect pressure to ramp up: from the changing climate, from businesses seeking predictability for investment and from the international community. New and tougher targets are likely to emerge.

A way forward

Grattan Institute's new report, Climate Phoenix: a sustainable Australian climate policy, offers a way forward. It provides a road map from current policies to where we need to be: meeting emissions targets with efficient, stable policies that have bipartisan support.
The road map sets out three steps the government of whichever political stripe should take. First, it should tighten the emissions limits (baselines) of the safeguard mechanism to force leading companies to reduce their emissions in line with Australia's agreed targets. This makes substantial reductions possible and – importantly – visibly links those reductions to the targets.
Second, it should provide incentives for low-cost emissions reduction by auctioning tradeable permits that would allow companies to emit above the baselines but within the target trajectory. This would maintain the overall direction of climate policy while targeting the cheapest possible emissions reductions.
Third, the government should expand the safeguard mechanism to cover more facilities and reduce the baselines to zero, when all emissions will have to be covered with permits sold at auction. This step creates an efficient structure capable of adapting to meet whatever future targets emerge. The road map has been designed to adapt developments in climate science, technology and political pressures, and the timing of each step will depend on these developments. Both sides of politics can adopt it while maintaining their policy principles. A Coalition government should stick to its existing policy framework, strengthening it over time.
A Labor government should adopt the Coalition's policy framework, building on it in a stable and predictable way as it moves to its preferred policy option of emissions trading. Bipartisanship and the long-term stability it offers is vital. Only a policy road map with broad bipartisan support can give the confidence essential for long-term investment in low-emission technologies.
The phoenix of myth represents hope reborn. It has been too easy to dwell on the short-term political game in recent years, rather than the hard work of building a sustainable, low-emissions economy. Our road map shows how our leaders can revive a practical, bipartisan climate change policy that can take us where we need to go.

*Tony Wood is director of the energy program at the Grattan Institute.

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Sorry, Feds: Kids Can Sue Over Climate Negligence, Judge Says

Climate Progress - Samantha Page

Young plaintiffs celebrate the judge's ruling. Credit: Our Children's Trust.

A group of youngsters just won a major decision in their efforts to sue the federal government over climate change. An Oregon judge ruled Friday that their lawsuit, which alleges the government violated the constitutional rights of the next generation by allowing the pollution that has caused climate change, can go forward.
Federal District Court Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin ruled against the federal government and fossil fuel companies’ motions to dismiss the case, deciding in favor of 21 young plaintiffs and Dr. James Hansen.

This will be the trial of the century that will determine if we have a right to a livable future

The federal lawsuit is part of a broad effort led by Oregon-based nonprofit Our Children’s Trust. The group and its allies have filed lawsuits and petitions in every state in the country. Filed in August, the complaint alleges that the U.S. government has known for half a century that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels cause global warming and climate change.
“If the allegations in the complaint are to be believed, the failure to regulate the emissions has resulted in a danger of constitutional proportions to the public health,” Coffin wrote. He called the lawsuit “unprecedented.”
The suit is based on the idea of the public trust — the same doctrine that guides the Clean Water Act. Under the idea of public trust, governments must protect commonly held elements, such as waterways and the seashore, for public use. Under this lawsuit, the plaintiffs allege that the climate and atmosphere must be likewise protected.
“This will be the trial of the century that will determine if we have a right to a livable future, or if corporate power will continue to deny our rights for the sake of their own wealth,” 19-year-old lead plaintiff Kelsey Juliana said in a statement following the ruling.
Three fossil fuel industry trade associations, who called the case “extraordinary” and “a direct, substantial threat to [their] businesses” were granted defendant status in January.

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