Lethal Heating: May 2018

31/05/2018

Why Blowing The 1.5c Global Warming Goal Will Leave Poor Tropical Nations Sweating Most Of All

The Conversation - Andrew King | Luke Harrington

Poor tropical nations are likely to feel the effects of climate change most acutely. Apiguide/Shutterstock.com

Almost all of us are going to be worse off as climate change takes hold, whether through heatwaves, changing rainfall patterns, sea level rise, or damage to ecosystems. But it’s the world’s poorest people who will suffer the biggest disruptions to their local climate, as our new study, published in Geophysical Research Letters today, explains.
The Paris Agreement aims to keep global warming well below 2℃ above pre-industrial levels, and ideally no more than 1.5℃. Meeting the more ambitious 1.5℃ target will be extremely challenging, given that we have already had more than 1℃ of global warming so far, and global greenhouse emissions are still rising.
We examined the likely consequences of missing the 1.5℃ global warming target in terms of perceptible local climate change, by looking at the “signal-to-noise ratio”. The idea is that 1℃ of warming is more noticeable where there is very little variation in temperature (such as in Singapore, for example) compared with places where the temperature variations are much higher (like Melbourne). Where temperature variations are smaller less warming is needed before the change in climate becomes noticeable.
Society and ecosystems are adapted to the range of temperatures experienced in their location, so the signal-to-noise measure of climate change reflects this effect. In simple terms, it is a measure of how soon global warming will push the temperature beyond the normal bounds of variation at a given location. This will happen sooner in places where the weather doesn’t vary much, and later in places where it does.
Because global warming is likely to overshoot the ambitious Paris goal of 1.5℃, but perhaps not the more modest 2℃ goal, we looked in particular at the signal-to-noise ratio created by using state-of-the-art global climate model projections to move between 1.5℃ and 2℃ of global warming.

More perceptible warming is projected over the tropics than at higher latitudes. CREDIT, Author provided

As expected, the signal-to-noise ratio is high in the tropics, where the variability in temperature is lower. This means that local temperature changes due to global warming will generally be felt more keenly in the tropics than at higher latitudes if the world exceeds the 1.5℃ Paris target.

The inequality of climate change
Next, we overlaid the signal-to-noise ratio data with population and gross domestic product (GDP) data to investigate the relationship between local climate change and wealth.
As the less economically developed areas of the world are predominantly in the tropics, and the more developed economies are at higher latitudes, we predict that the world’s wealthiest countries will experience less perceptible climate change than the poorest.

Locations in the poorest countries tend to experience greater local climate change. Author provided

For example, we project that the people of the UK, the first country to industrialise and one of the world’s richest nations, would experience less than half the level of perceptible climate change, as measured by our signal-to-noise ratio, than the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the world’s poorest.
This means that if we do exceed the 1.5℃ Paris target, the countries that will face the biggest impact are those who are least to blame for creating the problem, and least equipped to deal with the resulting problems.

An impetus to act
Keeping global warming to modest levels, as signatories to the Paris Agreement have pledged to do, has many benefits compared with the alternative of a 3℃ or 4℃ warmer world. Previous research has shown that this would reduce the frequency of heat extremes and their impacts in many places around the world, and would reduce droughts and extreme rain events. There would be benefits for many of the world’s plant and animal species as well as entire ecosystems, including the Great Barrier Reef.
Limiting global warming also helps the poorest parts of the world develop. By reducing greenhouse gas emissions more rapidly the developed world would put less of the burden of climate change onto the developing world. This should incentivise stronger emissions reductions globally. The UN Sustainable Development Goals call for action to eradicate absolute poverty and reduce inequality. Our research underlines the fact that both of these goals, and others, depend implicitly on reining in global warming.
Unfortunately, the alternative – and where our current emissions trajectory is taking us – is a warmer world in which the poorest and least culpable nations pay the biggest price.

Links

ANU Presents Climate Change In Beer Coaster And Bracelet Form

Fairfax

It's climate change....just presented very, very differently.
Rather than the usual graphs and pie charts, the Australian National University is presenting climate data in the form of beer coasters and even bracelets.
The gadgets have proved so popular that a website has been launched visualising climate change data from 112 locations around Australia to help people get their head around the topic.
Putting climate data into a tangible form was originally the work of researchers Dr Mitchell Whitelaw and Dr Geoff Hinchcliffe from the ANU School of Art and Design.

Dr Geoff Hinchcliffe from the ANU School of Art and Design with coasters made from laser cut wood showing the climate shift for an Australian city.

In late 2017, the pair approached the ANU Climate Change Institute with the idea of collaborating on small tangible visualisations for the Institute’s 2018 State of the Climate event.
The result was - what else but? - a beer coaster.
Sitting on desks, bars or tables, the aim of the coaster was to prompt discussion and reflection on Australia’s rapidly changing climate.

Climate change coasters created by the ANU School of Art and Design.

The coasters, which visualise 12 months of climate data against long term averages for Australian capital cities, proved so popular that the researchers decided to build a website showing the same visualisation for more than 100 different locations around the country.
“Everyone at the event was captivated,” Dr Hinchcliffe said.
“People were handling them, smelling them, asking about them, and everyone wanted more copies.
“So this online version is an opportunity for people to have a look through the
visualisations for themselves.”
Visitors to the site can download coaster images for print and social media sharing, or for laser cutting their own coasters.
The researchers, who have also made bracelets that represent 12 months of Canberra weather data, believe tangible visualisations of data are a powerful way of helping people understand complex topics.
“They are engaging in a way that traditional graphs just aren’t,” Dr Whitelaw said.
“Graphs can be static and hard to read, by having these visualisations live and online it lets people have a play around with them.
“I hope, in particular, that schools can use this website to discuss climate change and build data literacy.”
Each coaster shows two rings that represent 12 months of climate data from the Bureau of Meteorology.
The inside ring compares daily temperatures to that location’s long-term average. The outer ring shows the same visualisation for monthly temperatures.
Of the 112 locations shown on the Climate Coaster website, Charleville in Queensland had the highest temperatures in 2017 compared to long-term averages – with an increase of 2.6 degrees.
Of the capital cities, Canberra came out top with 2017 temperatures, 1.7 degrees above the city’s long-term average.
Halls Creek in the East Kimberly region of Western Australia was the only location that didn’t experience any temperature increase in 2017.
You can visit the Climate Coasters website here: http://gravitron.com.au/climatecoaster/
"We hope that printed coasters will occupy coffee tables across Australia and spark conversation and reflection on our rapidly changing climate,'' the website says.

Links

'Record Year For Records' As Renewable Energy Ramps Up Across Australia

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

For Father Peter Smith, the choice of adding solar panels to his presbytery roof in inner-Sydney's Leichhardt wasn't just about cost savings but also protecting the environment.
His 7.2-kilowatt system should repay the $8000 cost in five years but, more importantly, help him promote the "Caring for Creation through Solar" project aimed at bringing renewable energy to more parishioners in the Sydney Catholic Archdiocese.
"If I'm going to advertise, I'd better be first," Father Smith said. "We're looking at the climate issue and just caring for Creation."

Father Peter Smith of St Columba's Catholic Parish in Sydney's Leichhardt is leading the way on solar, as the renewable energy surge gathers momentum nationally. Photo: James Brickwood

The renewables message is catching on, with the latest annual report by the Clean Energy Council revealing "a record year for records", according the industry group's chief executive, Kane Thornton.
Wind energy last year matched hydro generation for the first time, with each providing about 5.7 per cent of the national electricity.
That was partly a result of a widening drought curbing hydro output and trimming total renewable electricity to 17 per cent of Australia's total, versus 17.3 per cent in 2016.
But the bigger story was the 700 megawatts of large-scale renewable energy capacity added last year and about seven times that total either under construction or with financial support, the Clean Energy Council report shows.

Weathering the storm: The Macarthur wind farm in Victoria remains Australia's largest - but for how long? Photo: Steve Hynes

Large-scale solar has particularly ramped up, with capacity rising from 34 megawatts in 2014 to 450 megawatts at the end of last year.
Some 50 large-scale wind and solar projects worth about $11 billion were under construction as of last December or scheduled to begin soon, the council said.
So far this year, some 291 megawatts of new solar projects have already been completed, with almost as much due to start exporting to the grid soon.
Various states are touting their gains, with NSW boasting a pipeline of almost 14,000 megawatts of renewable energy projects worth almost $18 billion in potential investment.
"This is in addition to the over 1200 megawatts of wind and solar farms under construction," NSW Energy Minister Don Harwin told Fairfax Media. "We know the private sector is seeing the opportunities to invest in new energy generation in NSW."
Victoria's first 650-megawatt renewable energy auction, meanwhile, is the single largest renewable energy tender in the country.
While the current boom is driven by the 2020 Renewable Energy Target, which should be achieved at least a year early, the industry is seeking clarity about what comes next.
"Our concern is that the momentum we have at the moment is at risk without strong policy certainty in the post-2020 environment," Mr Thornton said.

Impact Investment Group's Swan Hill solar farm - 21 large-scale projects were under construction at the end of 2017. Photo: Supplied

That certainty, or otherwise, could be determined in coming weeks as states and territories prepare to discuss the final design of the Turnbull government's proposed National Energy Guarantee targeting affordability, reliability and reduced emissions from the electricity sector.
“The continued investment in more supply is essential to driving down electricity prices," Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg told Fairfax Media.
"That is why we are working to finalise the [NEG] to not only provide investment certainty to spur on more investment but to also ensure there is enough back-up and storage in the system for intermittent renewables.”
Rooftop solar, meanwhile, has now reached 1.825 million Australian households, the annual report noted. Average systems last year were 6.27 kilowatts, more than double the size in 2012.
Interestingly, about one in eight of the 172,000 PV installations last year included a battery, up from 5 per cent in 2016.
For Father Smith, who has already mustered a couple of dozen willing parishioners to take up solar, storage is not the priority.
"Batteries aren't quite there yet, but they're coming," he said.

Links

30/05/2018

Poorest Hardest Hit By Even Low End Of Paris Climate Temperature Goals

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

The tropics, home to many of the world's poorest nations, will be hard hit by global warming even at the lower end of the Paris climate goals, exacerbating inequality and worsening stresses on human populations and ecosystems alike, a new paper argues.
Research published Wednesday in Geophysical Research Letters examined the likely climate change impacts on wealthy and poorer countries under the 1.5 degree-2 degree warming limit - compared to pre-industrial times - as set by the 2015 Paris accord.

People volunteer to be sprayed in Karachi, Pakistan, as the mercury climbed well into the 40s this month. Photo: AP

Australia's tropical north - a region targeted for greater development in the future - will not escape the effects.
“People in Darwin will experience more of a shift in their climate than people in Melbourne, for example," said Andrew King, a climate scientist at Melbourne University and co-author of the report.
While tropical regions have generally warmed less than higher-latitude regions in the past century or so, ecosystems and societies typically experience a more narrow temperature variability over the year.
Polar regions, for instance, can experience anomalies of as much as 20 degrees whereas places close to the equator rarely have departures from the norm of more than a few degrees.

The paper applied a simple signal-to-noise ratio to identify the potential impacts of further warming and found aiming for 1.5 degrees rather than 2 degrees "makes quite a big difference", said Dr King.
"I was surprised by just how clear that outcome was.”
More temperate countries, led by Britain, were much less affected than tropical ones such as Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo - even though the latter nations have been relatively small contributors historically to greenhouse gas emissions, the paper found.
"The tropics tend to be the poorest regions in the world and that means they don’t have the capacity to adapt, even though they’re going to feel the brunt of the climate change," said Dr King, who is also a researcher with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes. “It certainly pushes the limits ... and some people won’t be able to cope.”
While the paper looked solely at temperatures, a warming world is also leading to rising sea levels, more powerful storms and heavier precipitation. The atmosphere can hold about 7 per cent more moisture for each degree of warming.

These changes would likely be "compounding effects", with poorer nations again likely to be harder hit than richer ones.
“It’s seems distinctly unfair given the cumulative emissions of countries like the UK,” Dr King said.
“These are the countries that haven’t benefited from industrialisation and may have their economic development hampered in the future by bigger shifts in the climate than the wealthier countries will experience.”

Animals in Lahore Zoo in Pakistan were given ice to help them cool off as temperatures reached 44 degrees or warmer last week. Photo: AP

Erwin Jackson, senior climate and energy adviser for Environment Victoria, said "current levels of warming are already at dangerous levels".
“While the world’s poorest will be hardest hit by climate change this is not just an issue for our northern neighbours," Mr Jackson said.
"Even current levels of warming are impacting on Australia through severe damage to the Great Barrier Reef, more extreme heatwaves and other weather-related events like bushfires."
While the discrepancy of impacts for poorer nations raised issues of climate injustice, Australia itself could face cascading challenges from abroad.
"What happens to others in our region matters to us," Mr Jackson said. "Severe economic damage and social unrest would have knock-on effects to our economy and national security.”

Sinking shoreline threatens millions in Indonesia

Links

Plain Sailing: How Traditional Methods Could Deliver Zero-Emission Shipping

The Conversation - Christiaan De Beukelaer

The Avontuur recently completed a sail-powered transatlantic cargo voyage. Timbercoast

On May 10, the 43.5-metre schooner Avontuur arrived in the port of Hamburg. This traditional sailing vessel, built in 1920, transported some 70 tonnes of coffee, cacao and rum across the Atlantic. The shipping company Timbercoast, which owns and operates Avontuur, says it aims to prove that sailing ships can offer an environmentally sustainable alternative to the heavily polluting shipping industry, despite being widely seen as a technology of yesteryear.
Similar initiatives exist across the world. In the Netherlands, Fairtransport operates two vessels on European and transatlantic routes. In France, Transoceanic Wind Transport sails multiple vessels across the English Channel and Atlantic Ocean, and along European coasts. The US-based vessel Kwai serves islands in the Pacific. And Sail Cargo, based in Costa Rica, is building Ceiba, a zero-emission cargo sailing ship.

Transporting cargo by sail is both a practical response to climate change and a contribution to a larger debate.

These initiatives have an environmental objective: transporting cargo without generating greenhouse gas emissions. But are they really a viable alternative to today’s huge fossil-fuelled maritime cargo transport industry?

Shipping emission targets?
On April 13, 2018, the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations body that regulates shipping, agreed for the first time to limit the sector’s greenhouse emissions. It’s targeting a 50% reduction by 2050 (relative to 2008 levels), with the aim to phase out emissions entirely.
This was a breakthrough, given that both the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement exclude international shipping (and international aviation) from emissions targets, because these are so hard to attribute to individual countries.
Conventional seaborne cargo transport is relatively energy-efficient. It emits less greenhouse gas per tonne-kilometre (one tonne of goods transported over one kilometre) than transport by train, truck or plane. But because 80-90% of all goods we consume are transported by sea, the total emissions of the shipping industry are immense.
According to figures from the International Maritime Organization (IMO), shipping accounts for 2-3% of global emissions – outstripping the 2% share generated by civil aviation.
As the global demand for goods increases, so does the need for shipping. As a result, the IMO has projected that the sector’s greenhouse emissions will grow by anything between 50% and 250% between 2012 and 2050, despite improvements in fuel composition and efficiency. More worryingly, a commentary on that report in Nature Climate Change warns that “none of the anticipated shipping scenarios even approach what is necessary for the sector to make its ‘fair and proportionate’ contribution to avoiding 2℃ of warming”.
A recent report commissioned by the European Parliament raises further alarm bells, underscoring the fact that the sector’s huge growth is likely to swamp any carbon savings that come from improved operations. On top of this, the significant progress made in other industries means that the relative share of greenhouse gas emissions from cargo shipping is likely to increase from the current 2-3% to 17% by 2050.

Yo ho ho, shipping rum the old-fashioned way aboard the Aventuur. Timbercoast

Zero-emission vessels?
The OECD International Transport Forum is less pessimistic. It projects a 23% increase in the sector’s emissions between 2015 and 2035 on current trends, but also argues that it will be possible to decarbonise maritime transport altogether by 2035, through the “maximum deployment of currently known technologies”.
These emissions-reducing propulsion technologies include kites, solar electricity, and advanced sail technology. Some of them, such as Flettner rotors, are already in use. But these will not be scaled up and become viable unless there is strict regulation, even if some shipping companies have taken steps to reduce their emissions ahead of a binding IMO target. Electricity-propelled container barges operate in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, the IMO faced a tricky balancing act in juggling the priorities of different countries. Climate-vulnerable nations such as the Marshall Islands want shipping emissions to be cut entirely by 2035. The European Union has proposed a reduction of 70-100% by 2050, while emerging economies such as Brazil, Saudi Arabia and India have argued against any emissions target at all. Despite these differences, the IMO did agree on a 50% reduction target by 2050 in April 2018.

Sail cargo
It took Avontuur 126 days to sail from France to Honduras, Mexico, Cuba and home to Germany. But conventional container ships can cross the Atlantic in about a week. Avontuur was carrying more than 70 tonnes of cargo on arrival in Germany. But many cargo vessels now carry more than 20,000 standard shipping containers (TEU), each weighing more than 2 tonnes and able to hold more than 20 tonnes of cargo.
Given the relatively small capacity of sailing ships, it is expensive and labour-intensive to ship cargo this way. But despite these limitations, support for sail cargo initiatives is growing. A consortium of small North Sea ports, for example, will “create sail cargo hubs in small ports and harbours, giving local businesses direct access to ethically transported goods”.

Ceiba, a new sailing vessel builds on traditional skills and incorporates new technologies to help attain global carbon emission targets.

These initiatives signal the revival of sail cargo with an explicit environmental agenda, although this effort is dwarfed by the scale of the global shipping industry. But while they don’t stack up in logistical terms, these voyages can help us see the possibilities for a world without fossil fuels. Sail cargo aims to rethink not only the means of propulsion for cargo vessels, but the entire scale, economy and ethics of cargo transport.
Traditional sailing vessels like Avontuur will not be able to compete with conventional cargo vessels on speed, scale or cost. But they help us focus on the underlying issue. We ship too much, too often and too far. The scale of shipping is unsustainable. That is why we need a change of mindset as much as a change of technology.
Sail cargo initiatives raise awareness about the devastating environmental effects of conventional cargo shipping. And they do so by showing that an alternative is possible. Indeed, it has been around for thousands of years.

Links

The Biggest Mistake We've Made On Climate Change

Fairfax - Ross Gittins

Illustration: Andrew Dyson

Every time I go to the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival I’m asked the same question: since there’s no policy issue more important than responding to global warming, and we’re doing so little about it, why do I ever write about anything else?
I give the obvious answer. Though I readily agree that climate change is the most pressing economic problem we face, if I banged on about nothing but global warming three times a week, our readers would soon lose interest.
But even as I make my excuses, my Salvo-trained conscience tells me they’re not good enough. Even if I can’t write about it every week, I should raise it more often than I do.
I’m still combing through the budget’s fine print, but I’ve yet to remark that its thousands of pages make almost no mention of climate change.
Even the federal government’s latest, 2015 “intergenerational report” peering out to 2055, devotes only a few paragraphs to “environment” and avoids using words starting with c.
I fear that history won’t be kind to the present generation – and particularly not to people with a pulpit like mine.

Illustration: Dionne Gain

We’ve known of the scientific evidence for human-caused global warming since the late-1980s. Since then the evidence has only strengthened. And by now we have the evidence of our own senses of hotter summers and autumns and warmer winters, plus more frequent extreme weather events.
And yet as a nation we procrastinate. Our scientists get ever more alarmed by the limited time we have left to get on top of the problem, and yet psychologists tell us that the harder the scientists strive to stir us to action, the more we turn off.
Our grandchildren will find it hard to believe we could have been so short-sighted as to delay moving from having to dig our energy out of the ground to merely harnessing the infinite supply of solar and wind power being sent to our planet free of charge.
What were we thinking? Did an earlier generation delay moving from the horse and buggy to the motor car because of the disruption it would cause to the horse industry?
The biggest mistake we’ve made is to allow our politicians to turn concern about global warming into a party-political issue, and do so merely for their own short-term advantage.
The initial motives may have been short term, but the adverse effects have been lasting. These days, for a Liberal voter to worry about climate change is to be disloyal to their party and give comfort to the enemy.
Apparently, only socialists think their grandkids will have anything to worry about. The right-thinkers among us know the only bad thing our offspring will inherit is Labor’s debt.
Global warming used not to be, shouldn’t be and doesn’t have to stay a right-versus-left issue. In Europe it’s bipartisan. Margaret Thatcher was a vocal fighter for action on climate change, and the Conservative Party is anti-denial to this day.
If you remember, John Howard went to the 2007 election promising an emissions trading scheme. The big debate in that campaign was whether Labor’s rival plan was better because it started a year earlier.

John Howard went to an election promising an emissions trading scheme. Photo: AAP

The econocrat who designed Howard’s scheme, Dr Martin Parkinson, was the same person the Rudd government appointed to develop its scheme. The Department of Climate Change was a virtual outpost of Treasury. Indeed, I know of few economists who aren’t supporters of putting “a price on carbon”.
At the time, the Libs’ strongest supporter of action on climate change was a Malcolm someone. I wonder whatever happened to him?
As Liberal opposition leader, Turnbull was offering bipartisan support for Rudd’s emissions trading scheme when he was thrown out by Tony Abbott, who quickly changed his views to become leader of the party’s then-minority of climate change deniers.
I don’t doubt there are many, many Liberal voters who accept that global warming is real and would like to see the Coalition acting more decisively, but feel obliged to keep a low profile and let Dr John Hewson do the talking for them.

The National Party's climate change denial is puzzling. Photo: Simon O'Dwyer

The fossil-fuel industry is no doubt generous in its support to any party willing to help it stave off the evil hour, but the attitude of business generally is different.
Initially, it accepted that the move to renewable energy was inevitable. In which case, the government should just get on with it, reducing uncertainty by making the rules for the transition as clear and firm as possible.
But when the Libs succumbed to the deniers, business savoured the temporary relief of doing nothing. Now, however, the electricity and gas industries are in such a mess that business is back to demanding certainty in the inevitable move to renewables.
The Coalition, unfortunately, is utterly incapable of agreeing to anything meeting that description.

With states taking the lead in the renewable energy push, a report by the Climate Council puts each state's efforts against one another.

Which brings us to the mystery of the seemingly denier-packed National Party. How any farmers or people from country towns can doubt the reality of climate change is beyond me. The National Farmers’ Federation certainly doesn’t.
But we can’t put all the blame on short-sighted politicians and crony capitalism. If enough of us did more to voice our disapproval, the pollies would change their tune PDQ.
And we’d have a more convincing story to tell our grandkids when they want to know what we did in the climate war.

Links

29/05/2018

Dutch Government Appeals Against Court Ruling Over Emissions Cuts

The Guardian - Arthur Neslen

Judges ordered a 25% carbon emissions cut by 2020 in the first successful lawsuit against a government’s climate policy

Marjan Minnesma, director of the environmental group Urgenda, arrives at court in The Hague prior to the appeal from the Dutch government. Photograph: Jerry Lampen/AFP/Getty Images

The Dutch government has launched a bid to overturn a landmark climate ruling, arguing that judges in The Hague “sidelined democracy” when they ordered a 25% cut in carbon emissions by 2020.
Government plans for a lesser 17% cut in CO2 pollution were deemed unlawful three years ago, in the first successful lawsuit against a government’s climate policy.
The case inspired a wave of climate lawsuits against governments in Belgium, Colombia, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, the UK, Uganda and the US.
But Mark Rutte’s government on Monday put the ball back in the plaintiffs’ court, arguing that judges in The Hague had overstepped their authority and were in danger of outflanking public opinion.
Climate minister Eric Wiebes told Dutch media: “We also believe that renewable energy should be increased and CO2 emissions should be reduced, so this is really about something else: it’s about how the judge has intervened in something that’s [called] democracy, and actually democracy has been sidelined.”
After the original ruling, the Dutch government announced ambitious plans to phase out all coal plants and cut emissions by 49% by 2030, as measured against 1990 levels.
But the plans have not yet been implemented and Urgenda, the citizens’ alliance that brought the original case, said Dutch greenhouse gas emissions were currently only 13% below 1990 levels while CO2 output was largely unchanged.
Lawyers representing the group’s 886 Dutch plaintiffs told the court: “The Netherlands is 34th in the world when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. But when it comes to per capita emissions the Netherlands ranks ninth – the highest of any EU country. A Dutch person emits twice as much as the global average and 1.5 times more than the average EU citizen.
“If we are not to reduce our emissions as quickly as possible, who is?”
With Urgenda’s legal battle becoming a litmus test for the effectiveness of climate litigation, the judges’ verdict – expected on 9 October – will be closely watched.
Christiana Figueres, the former head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said: “Urgenda’s bold action against the government of the Netherlands created an important new incentive for all governments to act expeditiously.
“Governments must act boldly and urgently. The Urgenda climate case is evidence that this is not just what should be done, it’s what must be done.”
The World Meteorological Organization reported that last month was the third warmest April on record after 2016 and 2017, while Bering Sea ice cover fell to lowest level ever and a new CO2 ppm (parts per million) record was set.
In a sign of increased urgency in Brussels, the EU’s climate commissioner, Miguel Arias Cañete, called this month for member states “to accelerate our efforts considerably and raise our ambition”.
A UN dialogue to begin the process of “ratcheting up” climate pledges made at the Paris climate conference is under way, and seven EU states have called for the bloc to raise its ambitions.
The Netherlands was one of them, and Wiebes reportedly proposed a 55% cut in Europe’s planet-warming emissions by 2030, describing the Dutch government as “one of the frontrunners on climate policy”.
Domestically though, frustration with the slow pace of climate mitigation helped the Dutch Green party to more than triple its count of MPs in elections last year.
Jesse Klaver, the Greens’ leader, told the Guardian: “The main reason for that is that citizens are fed up with a government that chooses the interests of fossil companies over the environment.
“The Urgenda case made it possible to call the government to account. The tragedy of Dutch climate policy is that our governments always had goals, but were never able to fulfil them. The verdict showed that when they fail to act on climate change a court can tell a government: you have a responsibility to protect your people and to keep your commitments.”
Climate actions have often been hostage to the changing composition of national governments, and the Dutch parliament is currently working on a climate change bill to ensure policy continuity. Anne van Pinxteren, a government spokeswoman, said that while Rutte’s administration expected to cut emissions by between 19-27% by 2020, the court judges had “set a major legal precedent” in altering its plans.
“There is a chance that with current policy the emission reduction goal of the court will not be met,” she said. “If that is the case, the state will have to take additional measures which will need to have an effect in the very short term. These will most likely not be cost-effective and/or have big consequences on society.”
Environmentalists, though, counter that the cost of the toughest climate action now pales by comparison to the estimated $30tn of damages that not meeting it could bring.
Marjan Minnesma, Urgenda co-founder and director, told the Guardian: “Today in court we showed that it would cost around 0.5% of our GDP to meet the climate measures that have been proposed. If it is necessary and we are an extremely rich country and we can avoid extremely high risks, we think it should be done.”

Links

Government Urged To Stop Great Barrier Reef Tree-Clearing 'Frenzy'

Fairfax - Nicole Hasham

Forest covering an area more than 50 times the size of the combined central business districts of Sydney and Melbourne is set to be bulldozed near the Great Barrier Reef, official data shows, triggering claims the Turnbull government is thwarting its $500 million reef survival package.
Figures provided to Fairfax Media by Queensland’s Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy show that 36,600 hectares of land in Great Barrier Reef water catchments has been approved for tree clearing and is awaiting destruction.

Corals in the Great Barrier Reef have a lower tolerance to heat stress than expected.

The approvals were granted by the Queensland government over the past five years. About 9000 hectares under those approvals has already been cleared.
Despite the dire consequences of land clearing for the Great Barrier Reef – and billions of dollars of public money spent over the years to tackle the problem – neither Labor nor the government would commit to intervening to stop the mass deforestation.

Land clearing can allow sediment, fertiliser and pesticides to run into rivers that flow into the Great Barrier Reef. Photo: Jason South

The office of Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg did not say if his government was comfortable with the extent of land clearing approved in Queensland, or if it would use its powers to cancel permits.
Federal Labor environment spokesman Tony Burke said land clearing “can hit the environment from every angle”.

Labor environment spokesman Tony Burke. Photo: Andrew Meares

“It attacks native habitat, can put further pressure on threatened species, adds to the causes of climate change and contributes to increased nutrient and sediment run-off directly into the Great Barrier Reef,” he said.
“It makes no sense that this federal government has been so willing to turn a blind eye to large-scale land clearing in Queensland.”
However, he also did not say whether Labor would review, and potentially cancel, approvals for land clearing in Queensland if it won government.
The federal government last month pledged more than $500 million to protect the reef. It included $201 million for water quality improvements through changed farming practices, such as repairing damage caused by land clearing.
Land clearing can allow sediment, fertiliser and pesticides to run into rivers that flow into the Great Barrier Reef. This causes poor water quality – the second biggest threat to the reef’s health after climate change – which leads to more algae and less coral diversity.

Old growth forest in the vicinity of Kingvale Station, where 2000 hectares is set to be cleared. Photo: Australian Conservation Foundation

The vast majority of the clearing in reef catchments was approved by the former Newman government to allow for “high value” agriculture. The Palaszczuk government tightened the laws this month to disallow such approvals.
Proponents of land clearing in Queensland say large areas of the state's vegetation would remain untouched and that farmers have a right to make their land more productive. They also argue some clearing is required to maintain the health of other vegetation.
However, the Wilderness Society, which conducted its own separate analysis of the land to be cleared, described the pending destruction as a "frenzy".
The group’s nature campaigner, Jessica Panegyres, said the clearing across 58 properties “severely undercuts” the federal government’s reef rescue plan.
“The Turnbull government has powers under national environmental laws to halt the clearing, particularly given the big threat to the reef. But they simply refuse to act,” she said.
About 30,000 hectares of the planned clearing is slated for Olive Vale Station on Cape York, which was previously owned by federal Liberal MP Warren Entsch.
Mr Entsch has reportedly dismissed as “emotional claptrap” concerns that the clearing would harm the reef, and said the property had some of the best agriculture potential in the region.
The clearing also includes almost 2000 hectares at Kingvale Station. The federal government used its powers to assess that proposal under Commonwealth laws, a move opposed by some Coalition MPs including Matt Canavan, Barnaby Joyce and Mr Entsch. Federal officials have since given preliminary support to that clearing.
The federal government has the power to call in projects for assessment under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act if it believes the development may affect “matters of national environmental significance”. The work cannot proceed until the approval is granted.
Following a decision last year by the United Nations body UNESCO not to list the reef as "in danger", a listing the government fought hard against, Mr Frydenberg talked up the Commonwealth's powers on land clearing, saying "we'll continue to implement those".

Links

Land-Clearing Wipes Out $1bn Taxpayer-Funded Emissions Gains

The Guardian - Adam Morton

Official data shows forest-clearing released 160m tonnes of carbon dioxide since 2015

Emissions projections data estimates more than 60.3m tonnes will be emitted this year – equivalent to more than 10% of national emissions.

More than $1bn of public money being spent on cutting greenhouse gas emissions by planting trees and restoring habitat under the Coalition’s Direct Action climate policy will have effectively been wiped out by little more than two years of forest-clearing elsewhere in the country, official government data suggests.
The $2.55bn emissions reduction fund pays landowners and companies to avoid emissions or store carbon dioxide using a reverse auction – the cheapest credible bids win. The government says it has signed contracts to prevent 124m tonnes of emissions through vegetation projects – mostly repairing degraded habitat, planting trees and ensuring existing forest on private land is not cleared.
Based on the average price paid by the government for a tonne of carbon dioxide, the projects will receive about $1.48bn from taxpayers as they deliver their cuts over the next decade.
Meanwhile, forest-clearing elsewhere in the country has released more than 160m tonnes of carbon dioxide since the emissions reduction fund began in 2015. Emissions projections data estimates another 60.3m tonnes will be emitted this year – equivalent to more than 10% of national emissions.
An analysis by the Wilderness Society suggests the official figures underestimate the rate of land-clearing, and in reality the projects paid for from the Direct Action emissions reductions fund would have had their work nullified in even less time.
The Wilderness Society climate campaign manager, Glenn Walker, said other data sources suggested the projections data was almost certainly an underestimate.
He said the government’s forest-clearing emissions counted areas felled for farming, mining and other industry, but not those from native forest logging for timber, which are absorbed into another category. Australian National University scientists have estimated native forest logging may contribute another 38m tonnes a year.
Walker said the official forest-clearing figures also underplayed the amount of mostly agricultural land-clearing in Queensland. State data showed that 395,000 hectares were felled in 2015-16, releasing 45m tonnes of emissions from that state alone.
The Wilderness Society estimates suggest 600,000ha of land were cleared across the country in 2016, an area equivalent to about half of greater suburban Sydney, and the most in a decade.
Walker said the government had shown it wanted mass land-clearing to continue, pointing to evidence that federal environment department notices asking Queensland landholders to explain suspected illegal clear-felling on their land had been withdrawn after lobbying by Liberal National MPs and senators.
“It’s a disgrace that there is a massive public investment going into tree planting while the government sits back and not only watches but encourages the mass destruction of forests,” Walker said.
The environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, did not directly respond to questions about how the rate of land-clearing squared with the government’s emissions goals. He said a departmental review of climate policies last year confirmed that Australia had a comprehensive set of emissions reduction policies, and that the emissions reduction fund was internationally recognised as one of the world’s largest domestic carbon offset markets.
Land-clearing spiked in Queensland after the former Liberal National premier Campbell Newman relaxed laws preventing mass deforestation. The Palaszczuk Labor government has repealed the changes to restore earlier protections but legacy clearing permits remain for about 115,000ha.
The federal government is resisting calls that it should use national environmental laws to stop land-clearing that threatens endangered species, saying it is a state responsibility. Frydenberg is currently considering a draft department of environment recommendation that a Queensland farmer be allowed to clear most of a 2000ha block of Cape York forest that is home to endangered species. Scientific advice suggests allowing it would likely increase sediment runoff on to the Great Barrier Reef.
The government is also facing calls that it make changes to the emissions fund. It has committed $2.28bn on what it says is 191m tonnes of abatement, but questions remain over whether some types of projects backed by the fund – such as capturing methane from decomposing rubbish at landfill sites to convert into electricity – are actually limiting emissions or just being rewarded for what they would have done anyway. “Avoided deforestation” projects – paying farmers to not clear land – are also contentious.
Habitat restoration and tree-planting projects have broader support. In a recent paper in the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, University of Queensland research fellow Dr Megan Evans found that well-designed incentives could encourage landowners to back reforestation on otherwise agricultural land, with broad benefits for the environment and community.
But she found that Australia’s reforestation program was being undermined by land-clearing elsewhere on the continent.
She said people were likely being held back from signing up for reforestation projects by inconsistent messages from government.
“If, as a society, we have a goal to reduce emissions, we need to ideally point all the policy messages towards that goal,” she said. “Unfortunately this hasn’t been happening.”
Australia’s total national emissions continue to rise. The most recent national greenhouse accounts showed a 1.5% increase last year. The government has pledged to cut emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2030.
Emissions from what is known as “land use, land use change and forestry” – a vast category that takes in forest-clearing, native logging, tree planting and the natural impact of and recovery from disasters such as fire, flood and drought – rose by 0.5%. The 60m tonnes from forest-clearing cancelled out what would have otherwise been an emissions sink.
The next emissions reduction fund auction is scheduled for 6 and 7 June.

Links

Dear Media: We Need More Stories About Resilience To Climate Change

Los Angeles Times - Elizabeth Arnold*

The village of Newtok, Alaska is shown in this May 24 2006. (Al Grillo / Associated Press)

Overwhelmed by climate change? It's not your fault.
Actually, you are to blame for climate change. But it's the media's fault for making you feel completely hopeless about it.
That includes me. As a correspondent for NPR 10 years ago, I did a story on Newtok, a remote Yupik community in northwest Alaska that was both sinking and eroding because of the effects of global warming. In the decade since the report aired, hundreds of national and international reporters have visited Newtok, and a dozen other Alaskan communities like it, to document the effects of climate change.
The stories all fit the same narrative. With somber music, images of houses and schools tipping precariously off cliffs and phrases like "impending doom," the reports paint a picture of tragedy and hopelessness and frame the residents as victims, climate change "refugees" whose communities are one bad storm away from ceasing to exist.
The repetition of this narrative over the last 10 years has done little to help. There is still no dedicated agency or funding at the federal level to address climate-induced relocation. And while the public is slowly accepting the reality of warming, even those identified as the most alarmed say they don't really know what to do about it.

The threats posed to humans, polar bears and entire ecosystems are recounted on a daily basis, leading to what researchers call a 'hope gap.'

This familiar narrative, about communities facing sea level rise and coastal erosion, fits into a larger pattern of climate change coverage. The threats posed to humans, polar bears and entire ecosystems are recounted on a daily basis, leading to what researchers call a "hope gap." With little offered in the way of action or response, people eventually tune out: "We're doomed. What's on Hulu?"
As someone who lives in Alaska and has been to the North Pole twice, I've got a pretty good idea of how bad it is. What I'd like to know more about is what people are doing to counter it. I want to know how cities are meeting emissions targets in spite of the Trump administration's environmental rollbacks. I want to know that the fastest-growing job in the country is solar panel installer.
I'm not alone, apparently. A surprising number of scholars are studying how the public responds to climate news. There's even a Media and Climate Change Observatory that keeps daily track of climate-related stories. In 2004, its founder, Max Boykoff, was among the first to identify a trend of "false balance" in the early reporting. That's the practice of pairing a contrarian view from an organization skeptical of climate change to "balance" the view of a reputable climate scientist. Several years later, Boykoff took another look and found that most news organizations had self-corrected. More recently, he called attention to a "trend of daily fear, misery and doom" that leaves audiences feeling powerless.
This doesn't mean we should stop reporting the terrifying realities. But it does mean we need to start telling stories about effective responses: practical, replicable examples of how individuals, businesses and governments are tackling climate change. It may smack of advocacy, but what self-respecting public health reporter would do a story about an epidemic without including information about an available vaccine or how to avoid infection?
Take Newtok, for example. That community is not waiting and watching helplessly as homes are erased by the sea. Quite the opposite is true: It's a place where indigenous people are adapting in order to stay in a region where they've managed to weather wrenching environmental and cultural change for thousands of years.
Newtok residents have spent the last decade raising money, navigating a bureaucratic morass and collaborating with everyone from the local Lions Club to the Department of Defense in order to move just nine and a half miles away. Their new community is taking shape on firm volcanic rock. It's called Mertarvik, which means "place to get water," because it has a fresh water spring, something the old site lacks. Community members have built seven energy-efficient homes. They're building another four this summer, and 13 refurbished military barracks are scheduled to arrive by barge. State agencies will soon be required to fund a new school, an airstrip and public utilities.
The process of relocating a community is painfully incremental, but it's one that should be documented for the same reason so many news organizations sent reporters to Newtok in the first place. Although Newtok's plight was broadcast as a harbinger of tragic things to come, its response might serve as a model for the coastal and island communities around the world facing the same threat.
If we journalists were able to self-correct for false balance, surely we can self-correct for an overly narrow narrative that amounts to a steady drip of catastrophic predictions. Newtok, a community "doomed" by climate change, has figured out how to adapt — one innovative idea, one grant, one barge load at a time. It will not cease to exist. In fact, life might even be a little bit better on higher, more solid ground and with fresh water. It's a story worth telling.

*Elizabeth Arnold is a Shorenstein fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School and a journalism professor at University of Alaska Anchorage. She was previously a correspondent for National Public Radio.

Links