'Existential Threat': Climate Change Risks Finally Grab Australia's Attention

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

When Cyclone Evan slammed into Samoa five years ago next week, it triggered the near-complete loss of power and water supplies in the capital, Apia, and forced villagers to relocate to schools and the university for months.
The category-4 tempest was the strongest to hit the Pacific nation in a couple of decades. For Samoan Brianna Fruean, one of the Pacific Climate Warriors, it was another sign - along with rising sea levels, and more intense floods and droughts - that action needed to be taken.


Water bills headed 'same way as energy'
Rising population and climate change could translate into much higher water bills without action being taken now.

"Climate change is happening right in front of our eyes," Fruean said this week on the sidelines of a meeting in Fiji of Civicus, a global civil society group.
Helen Clark - the former New Zealand prime minister and an ex-senior United Nations official - was also at the Suva gathering. Clark says she is not surprised by its central topic.

An overhead view of Ejit, of the Marshall Islands, where rising sea levels are already an inescapable part of daily life. Photo: New York Times

"You can't come to a meeting in the Pacific and not have climate change as the focus," Clark tells Fairfax Media. "Everybody talks about it because it's an existential threat to the Pacific."
Samoa at least has high ground where people can seek refuge. Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands are nations barely three metres above sea level, making them particularly vulnerable to storm surges and rising seas.
Such vulnerabilities are not lost on Australian authorities.
Despite the often tortured debate stoked by some conservative politicians and commentators denying climate change is real, a range of agencies are quietly assessing abilities to cope with threats from a refugee influx, increased calls for aid, and impacts on the domestic economy.

Kaitara Kautu, a net fisherman whose home flooded during a 2015 king tide in Betio, a town in Kiribati. Photo: New York Times

And as 2017 draws towards a close, Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg is putting the final touches to a review of Australia's climate policies due for release by month's end.
Frydenberg offers no hint of any major surprise, repeating familiar lines that Australia's pledge to the Paris climate accord - to cut 2005 level emissions 26-28 per cent by 2030 - "is one of the largest reductions on a per capita basis and is a commitment we plan on honouring".

Brianna Fruean, a Pacific Climate Warrior and environmental activist from Samoa. 

Scrutiny
While festive seasonal distractions may dim the chance of an immediate and close scrutiny of his climate review, the challenges for the Turnbull government will still be waiting when politicians reconvene in the new year.
International attention will also remain, whether at this week's One Planet Summit in France to assess the progress on the Paris climate deal two years on, or late in 2018, when all nations will be pressed to increase their ambition to curb the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming.

Kianteata Bwaurerei lost his taro pits to inundation on Abaiang, an atoll in Kiribati. Photo: New York Times

On the emissions front, Frydenberg has already had his options significantly reduced.
The government's signature National Energy Guarantee aimed at providing a more reliable, affordable and sustainable electricity supply locks the power sector into the same 26-28 per cent pollution reduction that the whole economy is supposed to track.

Sailosi Ramatu looks over the sea at his old village Vunidogoloa in Fiji. Each time the ocean surged through their coastal Fijian village, residents would use rafts to move from house to house.  Photo: AP

Even if Frydenberg can convince the states to sign up - a huge ask unless there is a major power outage over the summer - such an approach won't be the best.
"Electricity production in OECD countries is always part of the cheapest options to decarbonise the economy, and it's also a big source of emissions," said Yann Robiou du Pont, a researcher at Melbourne University's Australian-German Climate & Energy College.
"There are fewer assets to transform and they're usually closer related to governmental decision-making."
In Australia's case, the electricity sector is the largest source of emissions, accounting for about a third of the total, and home to many ageing and relatively dirty coal-fired power plants.
Another big source, land clearing, is again on the increase in states such as Queensland and NSW.
"Energy efficiency and productivity will play an important role as we transition to a lower emissions future," Frydenberg said. "We already have in place the National Energy Productivity Plan for a 40 per cent improvement by 2030 and we are always looking at ways to improve in this area while delivering an affordable and reliable energy system."
Mr Robiou du Pont notes the Climate Change Authority's own recommendation that Australia's fair contribution to emission cuts would be much higher than the Abbott-Turnbull government's offer, given the country's high per capita pollution and also relative wealth - if not political will - to transform its economy.
The authority - which the Coalition government tried but failed to abolish - called for a 25 per cent cut of 2005-level emissions by 2020, and 54 per cent by 2030. That's roughly double the government's ambition.

'Not serious'
Mark Butler, Labor's climate spokesman, said his party is sticking with a 45 per cent emissions reduction goal that "is consistent with the Paris Accord goal of limiting global warming to below two degrees".
"It is clear that the government's approach of a pro rata allocation of abatement between sectors will ensure the costs of meeting any emission reduction target will be higher than they need to be," Butler said.
"The electricity sector has a lower cost of abatement than most other sectors in the form of renewable energy, and renewable energy is already the cheapest option to replace ageing coal-fired power stations that will inevitably retire," he said.
(Energy giant AGL is expected to announce details within days of what its plans are post-2022, when it closes the ailing Liddell coal-fired power station in the Hunter Valley.)
Sectors like manufacturing and livestock agriculture have a much larger cost of abatement and few ready-to-deploy abatement technologies.
"The government's insistence each sector meets targets based on a pro rata division of the national emission reduction target just confirms they do not take climate change seriously," Butler said.

Business shift
Companies, meanwhile, are beginning to look beyond the political cycle.
Sarah Barker, a special counsel for Minter Ellison Lawyers, said there had been "a noticeable shift in the approach of the business community to climate risk in the past 18 months".
"Historically, the issue was largely viewed as a singularly 'environmental', ethical, non-financial issue - perhaps relevant to corporate social responsibility, but nothing more," she said.
"Increasingly, Australian businesses are realising that climate change presents significant financial risks - and opportunities - and that they need to strategise around this issue in the same way as they would any other industry trend or economic risk factor."
"Business has far less tolerance for climate change denialism than it did even a few years ago," Barker added. "Their investors are concerned about it.  Their insurers are concerned about it.  Their customers are concerned about it."

'New denialism'
Submissions to recent and ongoing Senate inquiries also indicate that whichever parties take government at the next election, many agencies already  have preparations underway to adapt to climate change.
Peter Whish-Wilson - the Greens' spokesperson for Healthy Oceans who led a Senate inquiry into the impact of climate change on the marine environment that last week released its report - said policy delay was "the new form of climate denialism".
"Whether you stick your head under the water up on the Great Barrier Reef and see the devastation first-hand or you talk to the defence force personnel involved in planning for natural disasters in the Pacific, you know that the effects of global warming are upon us and that without action the future is looking grim," Whish-Wilson said.
"We now need to think about the increase of marine heatwaves as part of the range of climate impacts we need to prepare for, like we do with bushfires and droughts," he said.

'Threat-multiplier'
For its part, the Defence Department's report to a separate Senate inquiry into the implications of climate change for Australia's national security detailed how it expects the "threat-multiplier" effect will hinder its "warfighting role".
"The national security threats that may emerge include inter-group rivalries, water, food and resource shortages and irregular migration," it said. "Many of the states in Australia's region face some or all of these challenges, in addition to being vulnerable to climate change impacts such as temperature and sea level rise."
Defence noted how it deployed 1000 staff to help Fiji recover from its $2.5 billion hit from Cyclone Winston, a category-5 storm in 2016. The HMAS Canberra was part of the deployment, along with planes that delivered 520 tonnes of humanitarian aid.
In its submission, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection said "climate change effects could permanently alter normal business, including the accessibility of assets and capability".
Interestingly, it noted that "there is no internationally agreed position on expanding the current definition of a refugee or impetus to create a new international protection obligation to encompass people displaced by climate change".
Organisations such as the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the Univerity of NSW downplay the threat of a flood of refugees crossing borders because of climate change, saying in its submission to the Senate that "there is scant evidence" so far.
"Internal displacement may, however, generate low-level social tensions and potential conflict over key resources such as land, housing, food, water and employment, and increase the human insecurity of the poor," said Jane McAdam, the centre's director.

'Climate debt'
Such a view of local disruption dovetails with those of both Helen Clark and Brianna Fruean.
Clark said climate displacement is already affecting African subsistence farmers forced off their land by rainfall patterns that are becoming harder to predict: "If you plant and the rain doesn't come, you've blown your credit and you're poverty stricken."
"We don't want our people to move," Fruean said. "We want to put that as the very, very last resort."
That said, Pacific nations are watching with concern the Australian and Queensland governments' efforts to promote the huge Adani-owned Carmichael mine, which threatens to open up a massive new coal province.
"The execution of the Adani project will be a huge carbon bomb for us in the Pacific," Fruean said.
She dismissed the characterisation of funds from rich nations to help her people cope with worse weather extremes and rising sea levels.
"I see it as climate debt," she said. "We wouldn't need that aid if it weren't for these countries investing in fossil fuels, and really creating the damage that we're seeing in our islands today."

Links

• Pacific Climate Warriors
• One Planet Summit
• Australia’s 2020 and 2030 goals
• In hot water: the impacts of climate change on marine fisheries and biodiversity
• Inquiry into the Implications of climate change for Australia’s national security

Great Barrier Reef Will Be Dead By 2100, Says David Attenborough's Blue Planet II

Fairfax - Latika Bourke

London: Coral reefs – including Australia's Great Barrier Reef – will be dead by 2100 due to human "maltreatment of the oceans", David Attenborough's Blue Planet II has declared.
Attenborough's follow-up documentary series, which took four years to film and produce, finished airing in Britain on Sunday night (local time). It ended with his grim warning about the state of our oceans, which Attenborough said were "under threat now as never before."

Great Barrier Reef's coral crisis
The Great Barrier Reef is on track for another year of coral decline, this year affecting prime tourism areas.

He said climate change, plastic pollution and over-fishing were all contributing to the demise of coral reefs.
Blue Planet II has been Britain's most-watched show of 2017, with 14 million tuning into the first episode of the wildlife series. Nine will air the seven-part series on free-to-air television in Australia in 2018.
A major section of the program is devoted to the Great Barrier Reef, where filming began in 2016 on Lizard Island.
The program charted the Great Barrier Reef's worst-ever bleaching event, caused by a combination of a warming ocean and an El Nino, which turned healthy corals into white rubble.
The following summer brought another big bleaching event, centred more to the south, leaving about half the reef affected during the two bouts.
Attenborough said more than two-thirds of the world's coral reefs had suffered from rises in ocean temperatures over the last three years.

Sir David Attenborough at the Great Barrier Reef.  

"Coral reefs could be gone by the end of this century," Chris Langdon, professor of Marine Biology and Ecology at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, told Attenborough.
"And the cause of this? Carbon dioxide. The more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the more acidic the ocean becomes," said Attenborough, raising the twin threat - acidification, along with warmer oceans - that is being triggered by changing the chemistry of the atmosphere.

Aerial surveys by the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies has revealed only the southern third of the Great Barrier Reef has escaped unscathed from coral bleaching. Photo: AAP

"Evidence points to the burning of fossil fuels as the primary cause for these increasing levels of carbon dioxide.
"And this is man-made beyond question?" Attenborough asked Langdon.

Healthy coral at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. Photo: Tory Chase

"Beyond question," replied Langdon. But he said the death of the reefs could be averted by switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources like solar and wind.
The coalition, under both Malcolm Turnbull and his predecessor Tony Abbott, have launched ideological attacks on the former Labor government's marine parks plan and renewable energy target.

Dwarf minke whales on the Great Barrier Reef.  Photo: Dean Miller

It has scaled back the 2020 renewable energy target and is preparing to reduce the area of Australia's marine parks by almost half. Some 1,200 scientists have called on the government to reconsider, saying the cuts to the parks are a "retrograde step."
Attenborough said the creation of more marine parks, which currently cover just one per cent of the ocean, were "vital" to protecting reefs from dying.
Yet despite the dire scenes depicted in his documentary, Attenborough remained hopeful.
"We can turn things around, we've done so once before," he said.
Attenborough cited the 1986 agreement to end commercial whaling, which he said had been instrumental in the recovery of whale species, despite some countries – such as Japan – continuing to hunt the creatures.

Plastic pollution entering dolphin tissue
Attenborough devoted much of the program to the eight million tonnes of plastic that ends up in the world's oceans annually.
The Blue Planet II team said they found plastic in every single ocean they filmed, "even in the most remote locations".
The program showed fish entangled in nets of plastic, a rice packet spewed up by an albatross in Georgia, and another bird killed by a plastic toothpick that had pierced its stomach.
"Once in the ocean plastics break down into tiny fragments – micro fragments," said Attenborough.
He said these, combined with the industrial chemicals that end up in the ocean, caused a "potentially toxic soup." Small organisms ingested the micro plastics and sent the toxins right through the oceanic food chain, he said.
"Dolphins are at the top of this food and it's now thought that pollutants may be building up in their tissues to such a degree that a mother's contaminated milk could kill her calf," he said.
He said scientific autopsies of dolphin calves found dead off the coast of the United States had been performed.
Attenborough said the problem "must be tackled for the sake of all life in the ocean."
The program also showed how clown fish make noises to protect themselves from predators. Clown fish which become separated from their families, as famously depicted in the Pixar blockbuster animation film Finding Nemo, can use noises to find their way back to their anemones.
But those noises can be drowned out by fishing boat engines roaring overhead.
"We're only now beginning to realise what an impact our noise is having on the ocean," said Attenborough.

Australia's response
Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg defended the coalition's record on the reef and said it was "rightly valued by the Australian and international community as a place of intrinsic beauty and incredible biodiversity."
But he did not address the coalition's plan to cut back the marine parks and the amount of renewable energy, instead attacking Labor's management of the reef when they were in power.
"After six years of Labor mismanagement, the Great Barrier Reef was on the World Heritage Committee's watch list to be 'in-danger,' with five massive dredge disposal projects in the marine park planned," he said.
"The Coalition took unprecedented action to fix Labor's mess ending all five dredge disposal plans as well as banning all future capital dredge disposal projects in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
"We also developed a comprehensive Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan setting out our strategy to manage, protect and improve the Reef for future generations."
"As a result of the Coalition's actions, the World Heritage Committee removed Australia from the 'in-danger' watch list, and praised Australia as a global role model for reef management.
"The Coalition has a comprehensive set of policies to invest in, and protect, the Reef having already invested $461 million in reef funding as part of a broader $2 billion ten-year plan by Australian governments focussed on water quality, reducing run off and eradicating crown-of-thorns starfish."
"Just this week we announced a world leading research project which will mix warmer surface water with cooler waters from the deep in an effort to reduce the impacts of thermal stress on the Great Barrier Reef to mitigate coral bleaching events.
"This is on the back of announcement last week of a trial on the Great Barrier to identify highly resilient reefs and pilot 're-seeding' to restore coral."

British considering plastic tax
Like millions of Britons, the British Environment Secretary Michael Gove is a fan of the series.
Gove said he was "haunted" by episode four called Big Blue. He vowed the Conservative government would "work urgently to identify further action."
"The imperative to do more to tackle plastic in our oceans is clear," he said. "We must act."
The British government said in its budget statement that it would explore ways to use the tax system to curb the use of single-use plastics like takeaway containers.
"The UK led the world on climate change agreements and is a pioneer in protecting marine environments," Chancellor Philip Hammond said. "Now I want us to become a world leader in tackling the scourge of plastic, littering our planet and our oceans."
The government has already introduced a 5p (9c) charge for all plastic bags in the UK.
Government data shows Britain's seven main retailers have issued 83 per cent – or 6 billion – fewer bags in 2016-17 compared to 2014, prior to the charge.

Links

• 'Super corals' may offer reefs some 'breathing space'
• Climate change risks finally grab Australia's attention
• Plans to curb green groups dropped but doubts remains
• Five charts that reveal our environmental peril
• Great Barrier Reef is not in danger, says Bishop

Koch-Backed Business Group Splinters in Climate-Change Dispute

Bloomberg - Ari Natter

• Activist groups fill void as companies drop ALEC membership
• Climate change, repeal of 17th amendment considered by group

Photographer: Matthew Staver/Bloomberg

A business-backed group that rose to prominence by prodding state legislatures to cut taxes, environmental regulations and gun restrictions, now finds itself at a crossroads amid declining membership and a bitter dispute over climate change.

The battle at the American Legislative Exchange Council erupted at the group’s winter meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, this week as members scrapped a measure declaring that climate change is not a risk after opposition from Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp.

"It was corporate blackmail," said Steve Milloy, a policy adviser for the Heartland Institute, a group critical of climate science. "They basically said, ‘We’re going to leave.’ "

The dispute over the climate provisions highlights the internal discord for the Arlington, Virginia-based group, which gained fame fighting President Barack Obama’s regulatory agenda. Over the past five years, more than 100 businesses left the organization, illustrating corporate concerns that the group may be going too far.

ALEC, which has been funded by companies like Koch Industries Inc. and coal giant Peabody Energy Corp., has 2,000 mostly Republican state legislator members, which it pairs with representatives from corporations and free-market interest groups. In recent years it debated model measures for state legislatures that take aim at state renewable energy requirements, set stricter voter identification requirements and would have U.S. senators appointed by state legislatures, not elected.

Demonstrators costumed as U.S. President Donald Trump and polar bears protest against climate change in Germany. BERND THISSEN

But those debates have been contentious, and turned the group into a bogeyman for consumer and environmental groups concerned about how corporate priorities can be pushed into the agenda of states nationwide. And that pressure has led to some internal woes.
Over the past five years ALEC has shed more than 100 members including Ford Motor Co. and Expedia Inc., largely over its position against climate rules, renewable energy and other issues that don’t jive with corporations’ publicly stated sustainability goals.
"Companies will come and go, and we’ve added companies too," Jason Saine, a North Carolina House member who is ALEC’s incoming chairman, said in an interview. "We’re healthy and the organization is growing. ALEC has matured over the years and learned how to have these discussions in a mature way, so we can talk about them."
Despite the high-profile company departures, ALEC says that it has about 300 corporations and other private members, such as trade groups and lobbyists, that are part of the group. It’s overall revenues have increased in recent years, from $8.4 million in 2012 to $8.9 million in 2015, the most recent year available, according to its tax returns.
Nick Surgey, director of Documented, a watchdog group that investigates the link between corporations and public policy, says the corporate defections have led to free-market activist groups with harder-edged views moving in to fill the void at ALEC.
"That vacuum is being filled by a radical agenda and these really extreme ideas are coming to the forefront," Surgey said.
As 1,000 attendees munched on beef short ribs and deviled eggs with okra at the Omni Hotel Nashville, a top topic of discussion was the climate measure, meant to encourage states to prod the Environmental Protection Agency to rescind its determination under Obama that climate change is a risk to human health and welfare and therefore requires regulation.
Exxon, Chevron and Honeywell International Inc. objected, telling the group it would lead to protracted litigation and create business uncertainty.

David Koch, along with brother Charles, backs ALEC. AP

Indiana State Representative Dave Frizzell, a former national chairman of ALEC, said he told those assembled in the closed-door session that if the measure was approved it would result in a corporate exodus similar to what occurred after the group was linked to "stand your ground" gun legislation following the shooting of the unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012. A score of companies, including McDonald’s Corp., The Coca-Cola Co. and Kraft Foods Group Inc., cut ties with the organization after that.
Since then ALEC has tried to "narrow our focus to main issues and policy," Frizzell said after joining the ballroom in prayer before a breakfast of scrambled eggs and biscuits. "We felt that’s something we don’t need to be dealing with."
The climate measure was backed by the Heartland Institute, an Illinois-based global warming skepticism group that has linked global warming to the beliefs of unabomber Ted Kaczynski, as well as groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the right-wing advocacy organization the James Madison Institute.

Lose Funding
"ALEC’s primary allegiance, and the allegiance of its public sector members, must be to consumers and not to the producers of particular goods and services," they wrote in a letter to members of ALEC’s Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force.
Myron Ebell, a director for the Competitive Enterprise Institute and long-time critic of climate science, said he canceled his flight to the meeting after he got word the endangerment resolution had been withdrawn.
"I believe that an overwhelming number of the legislative members of the task force were going to vote for it during the full task force meeting, but ALEC got some board members to show up and say this is divisive and we will lose funding," he said in a phone interview from Washington. "Losing funding is a rather sensitive issue at ALEC."

Internal Debate
In addition to model legislation mirroring Trump’s executive order requiring two regulations be repealed for every new one, ALEC also is considering a resolution recommending that Congress repeal the 17th amendment, adopted over 100 years ago to allow citizens to directly elect their U.S. senators instead of state legislators.
"The 17th Amendment has had many unintended consequences including runaway federal deficits, unfunded mandates, overreach by federal agencies and excessive and burdensome impositions by the federal government upon the States," the model bill states.
ALEC declined to identify which member was backing the resolution.
"It’s a new radically reactionary proposal that came up in this new period of Trump-dom," said Lisa Graves, a former Justice Department attorney who launched the Center for Media and Democracy’s "ALEC Exposed" program in 2011. "This certainly seems to be evidence of them feeling emboldened to embrace an extreme counter-democratic measure."
In the internal debate over the climate measure, a representative for Pfizer Inc. stood up and said the pharmaceutical company was based on science, and United Parcel Service Inc.’s representative weighed in, saying global warming was real, Milloy said. Ken Freeman, Exxon’s U.S. government relations manager simply said, "I am opposed to this," and walked away, Milloy said.
"UPS, and many others, made it clear that we do not support the resolution and that it conflicted with our corporate vision of responsible environmental actions," Kara Ross, a company spokeswoman, said in an email. "We worked to defeat the proposal and demonstrated how expressing corporate members’ views were key in leading to the withdraw of the resolution."
"What’s so interesting to me about this endangerment vote particularly is that its so reflective of this bigger conflict," said David Pomerantz, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute. "You have these ideologues, these Heartland Institute types who aren’t really marching to the beat of the same drum, who are really zealots."
"My feeling is this is being driven by the fact they need to stay relevant in the Trump era," he said.

Links

• US business group splinters over climate change
• Coal-Funded ALEC Prods Trump to Say Climate Change Not a Risk
• Tesla Hosts ALEC, LCV Woos Ivanka
• States Move to Roll Back Environmental Rules in Trump’s Wake
• Jerry Brown and California Take On Climate Change
• Vatican Says Other Nations Can Help With Climate Change
• Pruitt Questions EPA Finding That Climate Change Is Health Risk