Lethal Heating: 11/04/17

04/11/2017

Palaszczuk Says She Will Veto Federal Adani Loan As She Accuses LNP Of 'Smear'

The Guardian - Joshua Robertson

Queensland premier says the LNP ‘intends to smear me and my partner’ over his work for PwC on Adani’s application for funding through Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility

Annastacia Palaszczuk, campaigning with deputy premier Jackie Trad on Friday. The Queensland premier has accused the LNP of intending to smear her. Photograph: Darren England/AAP

The Queensland government will veto Adani’s application for a $1bn commonwealth loan to build a rail line for its massive Carmichael mine, Annastacia Palaszczuk has said.
Palaszczuk said the dramatic move, amid her campaign for re-election, came in response to what she believed was a federal Coalition plan to “smear” her and her partner, Shaun Drabsch, over his role in Adani’s loan application to the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (Naif).
As the government is in caretaker mode, any move to veto the loan would need bipartisan support.
The move will be a heavy blow to the Indian mining giant’s attempt to win finance in China for the controversial coalmine, but puts the state Labor government on the right side of opinion polls on the issue.
Palaszczuk has accused some in the federal government of breaching commercial in confidence obligations around Naif to try to sabotage her campaign.
But the upshot of the rumours is that Palaszczuk has discovered she unwittingly had a perceived conflict of interest because her partner worked on an Adani loan bid her government may have been asked to sign off on.
Palaszczuk said she learned on Tuesday of “a rumour circulating among LNP senators” about Drabsch’s work as managing partner for PwC, which helped Adani with its Naif loan application.
“I am told they planned to use this during the election campaign to impugn my character and suggest something untoward,” she said.
Drabsch was involved in PwC’s work for Adani and its bid for the federal loan but she did not know this until after the rumour arose this week, Palaszczuk said.
Palaszczuk sought the advice of the Queensland integrity commissioner, who told her “a reasonable member of the public, properly informed” would perceive she now had a conflict of interest.
Palaszczuk said she now wanted to “remove doubt about any perception of conflict” by notifying the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, that “my government will exercise its ‘veto’ to not support the Naif loan”.
The premier said she had kept a 2015 election promise that “not one cent of taxpayers’ money would go to this company” and stopped the former LNP government “gifting $500m of taxpayers’ money to Adani” through a state loan for its Carmichael rail line.

Fact v fiction: Adani's Carmichael coal mine – video explainer

Palaszczuk said her announcement on Friday in Brisbane would be the first Adani was hearing of her decision. She will ask LNP leader Tim Nicholls to endorse her decision.
If Nicholls refuses, the issue of enabling federal financing for Adani will likely become the decisive dividing issue for Labor and LNP in the Queensland campaign until polling day on 25 November.
Labor strategists believe voters in regional Queensland who support the mine - and whom the party needs to win over to retain power - will not feel so strongly about taxpayer support being withdrawn.
“In terms of the project itself, Adani representatives have been on the public record numerous times indicating that they do not need Naif to proceed with this project,” Palaszczuk said.
“Malcolm Turnbull can still give taxpayers’ money to Adani if he wants to, but I won’t stand for his LNP operatives trying to smear my good name.”
Palaszczuk said she still supported the project and jobs for north Queensland but “I do acknowledge many Queenslanders have concerns about the potential for the federal government providing a loan to Adani”.
She released the integrity commissioner’s advice, which said it could be perceived that Palaszczuk “may personally benefit” from influencing decisions in favour of Drabsch or against rival Naif contenders.
The integrity commissioner, Nikola Stepanov, told Palaszczuk her conflict arose through her role in the government’s Cabinet Budget Review Committee (CBRC) – the state’s “approving authority” to execute Naif loans – and Drabsch’s business dealings.
The premier’s move to veto the loan goes well beyond the strongly “preferred option” recommended by Stepanov – that Palaszczuk declare a conflict of interest and exclude herself from CBRC discussions and decisions on Naif projects.
Palaszczuk also released letters in 2015 showing the integrity commissioner raised no concerns about her ethical position when Drabsch joined PWC to advise on infrastructure projects at a federal but not state level.
Palaszczuk said Drabsch had kept his work on the Adani application from May 2016 a secret from her under his “commercial-in-confidence” obligations.
“Shaun has always told me he’s worked at PwC, working on infrastructure, and that is it,” she said.
The only people who knew were PwC and Naif, and of course the Naif reports to the federal government,” Palaszczuk said.
“I understand LNP senators were seeking to use this as a smear against me in the middle of an election campaign.”
Palaszczuk’s chief of staff David Barbagallo told her on Tuesday that he had, after becoming aware of “rumours being circulated by LNP senators in Canberra”, confirmed that Drabsch worked on the Adani bid.
Palaszczuk said the LNP senators “obviously” sought to “break that commercial in confidence” around Drabsch, saying the extent of knowledge about this was a matter for both Turnbull and Nicholls to address.
“What does that say about the federal government when they are breaching commercial in confidence arrangements between a company and the federal government?”
Efforts to discredit her would involve “trying to allege there was a massive conflict of interest and seeking to tear down my position as premier of this state and tear down my integrity and honesty”, she said.
“I’m putting on the record every step I have taken and to put beyond any doubt about this, we will veto that loan.
“I entered politics to make a change, I actually want to make a change to people’s lives, not to be smeared at.
“And this sort of level of politics, I think the public find truly and utterly disgusting, as I do.”
Federal resources minister Matt Canavan was quoted by the ABC as saying the Queensland government had been “all over the shop on Adani”.
“Last year, they wrote to the Commonwealth Government suggesting that we look at funding the Adani rail line through the NAIF. Then, in May this year, the Deputy Premier, Jackie Trad, said the Labor Government wouldn’t participate in any NAIF loan to the Adani project, which would effectively block federal funding. The next day, Treasurer Curtis Pitt contradicted her, saying the Labor Government’s position was to support Adani being funded by NAIF, he was quoted as saying.
“This is a circus, and it puts thousands of people’s real jobs and real businesses at risk.”
The Guardian has been told the state Labor government was first warned by federal colleagues weeks ago that the LNP planned to raise in federal parliament allegations about a conflict of interest involving a Queensland minister. It was not clear at the time this was Palaszczuk.
The Queensland government does not assess Naif loans but can veto them by objecting at both a project’s “due diligence” and “investment decision and execution” stages.
Labor was first pressed on its veto power over the Adani loan when activists and others, including Greens Maiwar candidate and environmental lawyer Michael Berkman, raised it earlier this year.
The state government had previously refused to contemplate its veto power. Strategists within Labor judged that - even while polls show a majority in the state and nationwide oppose Adani receiving the government loan – supporting the project was a critical step to retaining marginal seats in regional Queensland, especially Townsville.

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Climate Change 'Will Create World's Biggest Refugee Crisis'

The Guardian - Matthew Taylor

Experts warn refugees could number tens of millions in the next decade, and call for a new legal framework to protect the most vulnerable

Successive droughts, like those seen in sub-Saharan Africa, could cause millions to migrate to Europe. Photograph: Peter Caton/Tearfund

Tens of millions of people will be forced from their homes by climate change in the next decade, creating the biggest refugee crisis the world has ever seen, according to a new report.
Senior US military and security experts have told the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) study that the number of climate refugees will dwarf those that have fled the Syrian conflict, bringing huge challenges to Europe.
“If Europe thinks they have a problem with migration today … wait 20 years,” said retired US military corps brigadier general Stephen Cheney. “See what happens when climate change drives people out of Africa – the Sahel [sub-Saharan area] especially – and we’re talking now not just one or two million, but 10 or 20 [million]. They are not going to south Africa, they are going across the Mediterranean.”
The study published on Thursday calls on governments to agree a new legal framework to protect climate refugees and, ahead of next week’s climate summit in Germany, urges leaders to do more to implement the targets set out in the Paris climate agreement.
Sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, told the EJF: “What we are talking about here is an existential threat to our civilisation in the longer term. In the short term, it carries all sorts of risks as well and it requires a human response on a scale that has never been achieved before.”

The report argues that climate change played a part in the build up to the Syrian war, with successive droughts causing 1.5 million people to migrate to the country’s cities between 2006 and 2011. Many of these people then had no reliable access to food, water or jobs.
“Climate change is the the unpredictable ingredient that, when added to existing social, economic and political tensions, has the potential to ignite violence and conflict with disastrous consequences,” said EJF executive director, Steve Trent.
“In our rapidly changing world climate change – and its potential to trigger both violent conflict and mass migration – needs to be considered as an urgent priority for policymakers and business leaders alike.”
Although the report highlights to growing impact of climate change on people in the Middle East and Africa, it says changing weather patterns – like the hurricanes that devastated parts of the US this year – prove richer nations are not immune from climate change.
But Trent said that although climate change undoubtedly posed an “existential threat to our world” it was not to late to take decisive action.
“By taking strong ambitious steps now to phase out greenhouse gas emissions and building an international legal mechanism to protect climate refugees we will protect the poorest and most vulnerable in our global society, build resilience, reap massive economic benefits and build a safe and secure future for our planet. Climate change will not wait. Neither can we. For climate refugees, tomorrow is too late.”

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U.S. Report Says Humans Cause Climate Change, Contradicting Top Trump Officials

New York Times - Lisa Friedman | Glenn Thrush

Smoke rose from trees burned in a wildfire in Wrightwood, Calif., last year. A report from 13 federal agencies says extreme weather events have cost the United States $1.1 trillion since 1980. Credit Jonathan Alcorn/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Directly contradicting much of the Trump administration’s position on climate change, 13 federal agencies unveiled an exhaustive scientific report on Friday that says humans are the dominant cause of the global temperature rise that has created the warmest period in the history of civilization.
Over the past 115 years global average temperatures have increased 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, leading to record-breaking weather events and temperature extremes, the report says. The global, long-term warming trend is “unambiguous,” it says, and there is “no convincing alternative explanation” that anything other than humans — the cars we drive, the power plants we operate, the forests we destroy — are to blame.
The report was approved for release by the White House, but the findings come as the Trump administration is defending its climate change policies. The United Nations convenes its annual climate change conference next week in Bonn, Germany, and the American delegation is expected to face harsh criticism over President Trump’s decision to walk away from the 195-nation Paris climate accord and top administration officials’ stated doubts about the causes and impacts of a warming planet.
“This report has some very powerful, hard-hitting statements that are totally at odds with senior administration folks and at odds with their policies,” said Philip B. Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Center. “It begs the question, where are members of the administration getting their information from? They’re obviously not getting it from their own scientists.”
While there were pockets of resistance to the report in the Trump administration, according to climate scientists involved in drafting the report, there was little appetite for a knockdown fight over climate change among Mr. Trump’s top advisers, who are intensely focused on passing a tax reform bill — an effort they think could determine the fate of his presidency.
The climate science report is part of a congressionally mandated review conducted every four years known as the National Climate Assessment. The product of hundreds of experts within the government and academia and peer-reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences, it is considered the United States’ most definitive statement on climate change science.

Read the Full Climate Science Special Report
“It is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the report states.

“The climate has changed and is always changing,” Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, said in the statement. “As the Climate Science Special Report states, the magnitude of future climate change depends significantly on ‘remaining uncertainty in the sensitivity of Earth’s climate’” to greenhouse gas emissions, he added.
Despite the scientific consensus presented in the report, the Environmental Protection Agency has scrubbed references to climate change from its website and barred its scientists from presenting scientific reports on the subject.
The E.P.A. administrator, Scott Pruitt, has said carbon dioxide is not a primary contributor to warming. Rick Perry, the energy secretary, asserted Wednesday that “the science is out” on whether humans cause climate change.
Their agencies referred questions to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversaw the research.
The report has provoked consternation in scientific circles for months. Though the study has been in the works since 2015, several scientists said the election of Mr. Trump, who has labeled climate change a “canard” and appointed cabinet members who disputed the scientific consensus, caused them to worry the report would be blocked or buried.
That did not happen. Scientists who worked on the report said none of the 13 agencies that reviewed it tried to undermine its findings or change its wording.
“I’m quite confident to say there has been no political interference on the message,” said David Fahey, a NOAA scientist and a lead author of the report. “Whatever fears we had weren’t realized.”
Responsibility for approving the report fell to Gary D. Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, who generally believes in the validity of climate science and thought the issue would have been a distraction from the tax push, according to an administration official with knowledge of the situation.

Phoenix experienced record highs in June. The report says there are “no convincing alternative explanations” other than human activity to account for rising global temperatures. Credit Ralph Freso/Getty Images

One of Mr. Cohn’s top policy deputies, Michael Catanzaro, had the authority to block, delay or change the report. But Mr. Catanzaro, a former energy adviser to President George W. Bush and former Speaker John A. Boehner, chose instead to follow the lead of the Obama administration by referring the report back to more than a dozen federal agencies for feedback.
That review, according to two people familiar with the process, went relatively smoothly, surprising some scientists who worked on the report who had expected more resistance.
The only significant turbulence, according to one person familiar with the process, came from a midlevel political appointee at the Department of Energy who grilled the report’s authors on changes that had been made to temperature and other climate data over the years. The authors responded by adding a more detailed explanation of their methodology and all of the agencies then gave their approval, the person said.
Mr. Trump was barely aware of the report’s existence, several White House officials said.
Some critics of climate change science attacked the report as the product of holdovers from the Obama administration and chastised the Trump administration for allowing it to be published.
“I’m saddened that they have decided they will let the permanent government, the civil servants, continue down this road without supervision,” said Myron Ebell, director of global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian advocacy group.

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Scientists said the report’s findings were clear.
“This new report simply confirms what we already knew. Human-caused climate change isn’t just a theory, it’s reality,” said Michael E. Mann, a professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University. “Whether we’re talking about unprecedented heat waves, increasingly destructive hurricanes, epic drought and inundation of our coastal cities, the impacts of climate change are no longer subtle. They are upon us. That’s the consensus of our best scientists, as laid bare by this latest report.”
The report says the Earth has set temperature highs for three years running, and six of the last 17 years are the warmest years on record for the globe. Weather catastrophes from floods to hurricanes to heat waves have cost the United States $1.1 trillion since 1980, and the report warns that such phenomena may become common.
“The frequency and intensity of extreme high temperature events are virtually certain to increase in the future as global temperature increases,” the report notes. “Extreme precipitation events will very likely continue to increase in frequency and intensity throughout most of the world.”
In the United States, the report finds that every part of the country has been touched by warming, from droughts in the Southeast to flooding in the Midwest to a worrying rise in air and ground temperatures in Alaska, and conditions will continue to worsen.
“This assessment concludes, based on extensive evidence, that it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the report states. “For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”
The findings, other researchers said, create an unusual situation in which the government’s policies are in direct opposition to the science it is producing.
“This profoundly affects our ability to be leaders in developing new technologies and understanding how to build successful communities and businesses in the 21st century,” said Christopher Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “Choosing to be dumb about our relationship with the natural world is choosing to be behind the eight ball.”

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