Turnbull And Shorten Ignoring Voters On Coal And Climate

Fairfax - Sarah Gill*

Illustration: Andrew Dyson

Here are two statistics to ponder as we prepare to head to the polls this weekend: voter support for action on climate change has surged to historically high levels since the last election and; four fifths of us believe neither of the major parties actually gives a toss.
Polling released by the Climate Institute last week reveals that 72 per cent of us are worried about global warming, and that while only 17 per cent think the Coalition's climate policies are credible, the plausibility of Labor's response is ahead by just a whisker, at a paltry 20 per cent.
And, really, is it any wonder? While the Coalition and the ALP have emission-reduction targets – neither of which, it must be said, will avoid dangerous global warming – the policy detail underpinning them is woefully inadequate. It's like trying to build the Eiffel Tower with a box of matchsticks.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten, remain unequivocal in their support for Australian coal mining. Photo: Peter Braig

After a decade of flip-flopping on climate policy, the electorate, it seems, has wised up. We're not buying Labor's pledge of an "orderly" closure of coal-fired power stations – remember how well that went last time? – any more than Environment Minister Greg Hunt's enthusiasm for the Coalition's Emissions Reduction Fund which, as everyone knows, is about as effective as an ashtray on a motorbike.
Maybe the reason for our distrust, our incredulity, is that at the core of this policy vacuum, on the most burning issue of all – the fate of Australia's gargantuan coal reserves – both major parties are intransigent.
You don't need to be Einstein to know that curbing emissions requires us to stop burning fossil fuels – and if you can't burn them, why dig them up? And why, more to the point, expand our already significant coal production with a swathe of new "mega mines" planned in the Galilee Basin along with expansions across the Upper Hunter and the Liverpool plains?
Undeterred, though, by estimates that around 90 per cent of Australia's coal reserves need to stay in the ground, or recent mining moratoriums announced by the US and China, the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten, remain unequivocal in their support for Australian coal mining. Indeed, without a hint of irony, Turnbull has overlooked not just the climate impact but also the deteriorating economics and what analysts say are "delusional" asset valuations to urge us all to approach the issue of coal mining in a "clear-eyed, cool-headed and rational way". The audacity is simply breathtaking.
There's no point in calling a halt to Australian exports, says he, because others will rush to fill the gap and anyway our coal is cleaner. But hardly anyone is suggesting an export moratorium – just a ban on new mines – and, for the record, coal from the Galilee Basin is relatively poor in quality. As for jobs and growth – the new three-word slogan haunting this election campaign – the industry is around 80 per cent foreign owned, and mining giants across the board have indicated a willingness, perhaps even an enthusiasm, to import foreign workers.
If you thought Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg was on thin ice spruiking the benefits of coal for the third world – asserting, I kid you not, that coal will reduce air pollution – then the Australian coal lobby recently dispensed with reason altogether by claiming, in the wake of the Paris climate agreement, that "coal will play a part in reducing emissions globally".
Where will this end? And why do we find it so hard to shrug off the enduring fiction that shackles our destiny to this shiny black rock? Because it's too politically unpalatable to do otherwise, you say? But unpalatable to whom? Not, it would seem, the two thirds of Australians who favour phasing out coal mining to address global warming, or even the majority of northern Queensland voters who support the same. Not to six out of 10 people in the Prime Minister's own seat of Wentworth, either. And not, ultimately, to the burgeoning number of local government, finance, tertiary education or religious institutions that are choosing to divest from fossil fuels and the big banks that fund them.
Naturally, major resource companies – a significant source of political donations – would probably take a dim view of any alternate reality. Let's not forget that in the lead up to the last election, the Coalition snared $1.8 million from companies in favour of a carbon price repeal. Mining industry executives – who are drawn, with disturbing regularity, from the ranks of former politicians and political staffers – would, no doubt, be similarly disgruntled. And when you factor in the effect of marginal seats – such as northern Queensland's Capricornia, home to the largest mining workforce of all north Queensland electorates – all the pieces start coming together.
Which is why Queensland Liberal Senator and Federal Attorney-General George Brandis has been toiling away in the State's north, cranking out the "six point economic plan" and Adani Coal's now discredited pledge of 10,000 jobs to anyone who will listen.
All of this just underscores what we already knew: that not every vote will be equal this Saturday, not every vote counts, despite what our leaders say. On issues as critically important and as broadly supported as climate change and coal mining, for the time being at least, we're snookered.
The world's largest privately-owned coal producer, Peabody Energy, may have recently filed for bankruptcy protection amid a slump in global demand and tighter environmental regulation, but our political leaders are resolutely peddling a narrative on the merits of Australian coal that could have been drafted by the Minerals Council of Australia. Who knows, maybe it was?

*Sarah Gill is an Age columnist who has worked as a writer and a policy analyst.

Links

• The climate change letter most candidates won't answer
• Federal election 2016: Vast majority of Coalition environment funding in marginal seats
• Australia's environmental peril revealed in five charts
• Federal election 2016: Reef bleaching serious threat to tourism, jobs: OS poll

Tragic Lack Of Leadership Puts Red Hot Climate Change Out In The Cold

The Guardian - Graham Readfearn

Environment and climate groups publish final scorecards rating main political parties as Australians prepare to vote

The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, with the environment minister, Greg Hunt, in Townsville in June. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

If ever there was going to be a climate change election, surely this was going to be it.
As May came and the election date was announced, the implications of the global Paris agreement between more than 190 countries just months earlier were still resonating – the world was moving away from fossil fuels and the challenge to keep global warming well below 2C was agreed.
The globe had just had its hottest year on record. April was the 12th consecutive month to break global heat records. In Australia, we just had the warmest autumn on record.
Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, taken at Cape Grim in Tasmania, passed a symbolic 400 parts per million, driven by the burning of fossil fuels. Moves to cut climate research at the CSIRO made international headlines.
And then, of course, there was the worst global coral bleaching event on record, bookmarked by the worst known bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef, killing about a quarter of all corals mostly in the once "pristine" northern section.
This disaster coincided with the hottest sea surface temperatures on the reef in the Bureau of Meteorology's records going back to 1900.
So climate change and clean energy should have been the red-hot issue.
But instead, at least between the ALP and the Coalition, the reaction to these seismic events was, mostly, meh.
David Ritter, chief executive of Greenpeace Australia Pacific, says the reef's plight should have been the "tragic starting gun" for an election where all parties pitched a vision "for how Australia can flourish in a world of new technologies, renewable energy and cleaned up political economy".

It is as if the onion eater may have gone, but the bad breath of climate denialism still lingers across the government.
David Ritter, Greenpeace Australia Pacific

Instead, the political response was "tragically inadequate".
"The political debate has lacked all sense of proportion," he says, reserving particular disappointment that the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, had turned away from his previous passionate advocacy for action.
"It is as if the onion eater may have gone, but the bad breath of climate denialism still lingers across the government."
I've spoken to several leaders in the climate and environment movement in the past couple of days and one message comes through consistently.
While poll after poll shows the Australian public wants action, there's a distinct lack of leadership from the ALP and the Coalition.
Only the Greens have consistently shown leadership – which goes almost without saying.
John Connor, chief executive of the Climate Institute, says climate was "knocking on the door" but continued to be only a "tier two issue" for the main parties.
Although the ALP had a "demonstrably stronger platform" for climate change and a transition to clean energy, there was a "credibility gulf" between both main parties, their leaders and the public.
"The public just doesn't believe them," he says.
Connor believes that whichever party gains power, the Paris climate agreement will force the hand of the next government.
As part of the process, the UN will carry out a global stocktake of climate pledges from all countries in 2018. The Paris agreement also ensures that future pledges to cut emissions improve over time.
"They've danced around it this time, but they will have to grapple with it very soon," he says. "This is all a curtain raiser for the next 12 months and the parties' credibility will be put to the test."

Fossil-fuelled politics?
Could one reason for the lack of leadership and low profile for the issues be down to the funding that major parties get from the fossil fuel and mining industry and the close relationships which those industries have forged across the political spectrum?
Blair Palese, chief executive of the climate campaign group 350.org Australia, thinks that is a big part of the story.
Her group ran a Pollution Free Politics campaign trying to get candidates to sign a simple pledge: "I support a ban on donations from fossil-fuel companies and a ban on subsidies to fossil-fuel companies."

350.org Australia's campaign video to push politicians to sign a pledge to get fossil fuel cash out of politics.

Palese says the campaign clearly touched a nerve with the Liberals who cited it six times in its "Greening of Labor" scare campaign.
Not surprisingly, no Liberals signed the pledge, but there were some successes. All sitting Greens MPs and senators signed, as have 18 Greens candidates.
Serving ALP member for Richmond, Justine Elliot, signed the pledge, as did three ALP candidates: Janelle Saffin (Page), David Atkins (Cook) and Steve Hegedus (Ryan).
Other notable signatories include independents Andrew Wilkie (Denison), Rob Oakeshott (Cowper) and Rob Taber (New England).
Palese says after the election her group will push harder for a reform of the opaque system of political donations and for a national corruption commission to be established.
Palese, too, says there has been a lack of leadership, particularly on the need to prepare communities and workers for the unfolding transition away from coal to renewables.
'There is a terrifying lack of leadership – at national and state level – and it means workers are being left high and dry," she says.

Leadership lacking
Announcing its election scorecard (links to others at the bottom of this post), WWF Australia's chief executive, Dermot O'Gorman, said as the environment faced huge challenges "this generation of political leaders has not yet stepped up to reflect the concerns of the vast majority of Australians".
The Australian Conservation Foundation's chief executive, Kelly O'Shanassy, is similarly unimpressed with the political leadership. Only thanks to momentum from community groups and the tragic bleaching of the reef had the issues been pushed briefly into the limelight.
"The Coalition just didn't want to talk about it – their policies are quite weak," she says. "The ALP has much stronger clean energy transition policies, but neither leader has led the charge."
O'Shanassy believes one campaign from a coalition of environment groups, including ACF, WWF and The Wilderness Society, called Places You Love, has helped to push environmental law reform on to the ALP's policy platform.
The Coalition did make one major environmental announcement when Turnbull joining the environment minister, Greg Hunt, in Townsville to reveal a $1bn reef fund.
But campaign groups were quick to criticise the plan. Not only was it several billions short of what one group of scientists say is needed, but the announcement was just a shifting of existing cash from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation which the Coalition has been trying to shut down.
"There's no additional carbon reduction benefit from that," says Imogen Zethoven, Great Barrier Reef campaign director at the Australian Marine Conservation Society. "We did send the Coalition a series of questions on that announcement, but we didn't get any answers. It raises more questions than it answers."
She says one major win was a policy commitment from Labor to regulate pollution levels flowing into the reef. "That is not to be underestimated," she says. "That would be a major step forward."

Your vote?
So who should you vote for if you want to improve the chances of survival for the reef and Australia's unique habitats and help the country make the inevitable transition away from fossil fuels?
To help with that decision, in recent days the Climate Institute, WWF, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Australian Marine Conservation Society have all published assessments of the key parties on their environment and climate polices.
You should read them and then go and vote.

Links

• Climate change: John Hewson accuses Coalition of 'national disgrace'
• Australia's censorship of Unesco climate report is like a Shakespearean tragedy
• Carbon dioxide's 400ppm milestone shows humans are rewriting the planet's history
• Mourning Loomis Reef - the heart of the Great Barrier Reef's coral bleaching disaster
• Why even climate science denialist Marc Morano knows not to bet against global warming data

Scientists: Window For Avoiding 1.5c Global Warming ‘Closed’

Climate Home - Megan Darby

World is almost certain to breach danger threshold for millions of vulnerable people, study finds

Raised houses in Bangladesh protect inhabitants from rising flood risk (Flickr/Nasif Ahmed/UNDP Bangladesh)

Scientists have bad news for people on the front line of climate change impacts.
The 1.5C global warming limit vulnerable countries fought hard to include in the Paris Agreement may already be out of reach.
There is slim chance of stabilising temperature rise at that level without controversial negative emissions technology, according to a study published in Nature.
"The window for limiting warming to below 1.5C with high probability and without temporarily exceeding that level already seems to have closed," the report found.
It is a blow for those living near the coast of Bangladesh or low-lying islands like Kiribati, which is preparing for an exodus as rising seas swallow homes.
Coral reefs dying and tropical heatwaves are also expected to kick in at moderate levels of global warming, affecting millions of people worldwide.
In the most up-to-date analysis available, researchers found national climate pledges were consistent with temperature rise of 2.6-3.1C above pre-industrial levels.
Some poorer nations said they could cut greenhouse gas emissions further with financial support. These conditional targets would cool the planet a further 0.2C.
That still leaves a lot of work to bend the curve to "well below 2C", the main Paris goal.
Lead author Joeri Rogelj, at the Vienna-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, stressed the importance of periodic reviews.
"The grain of hope for these most vulnerable nations is that the Paris Agreement provides a regular forum where ambition can be increased," he told Climate Home.
Governments meet for a "facilitative dialogue" in 2018 and a stocktake in 2023. These provide opportunities to ratchet up their commitment.
The grim numbers do not rule out eventually bringing average temperatures back below 1.5C, but this will involve sucking carbon dioxide out of the air.
This d bioenergy with carbon capture and storage: growing plants to absorb CO2, burning them for energy and pumping the emissions underground.
Bioenergy is contentious because it puts energy crops in competition with food production for land, water and nutrients.
"It is a really important precondition to do this in a sustainable and a just way," said Rogelj, adding: "The faster one cuts emissions, the less one relies on these massive negative emissions afterwards to clean up the atmosphere."
The 1.5C threshold is still important and should not be dropped, he said. "The 1.5C limit is an expression of a risk assessment of dangerous climate interference. Even if we overshoot… the validity of that limit is still there."

Links

• Is avoiding 2C of global warming possible?
• Global warming 'slowdown' did not exist, say scientists
• Global warming 'hard to reverse' say scientists
• Rhetoric or reality? Climate scientists divided on 1.5C warming goal
• Activists row over bioenergy role in meeting 1.5C climate target