Issue Has Proved Too Big For Run Of Australian Leaders

Fairfax - John Hewson*

Climate policy has now proved a defining element in the demise of a run of Australian political leaders, from John Howard through to Malcolm Turnbull.

Illustration: John Shakespeare

Each of the fallen increasingly played short-term, opportunistic politics, mostly for personal political advantage, on an issue upon which most Australians agree - the need to address climate change. How can it be that voters don’t get heard by our politicians, who claim to listen to and be in touch with their constituencies?
While in all this, we have come close to putting a price on carbon, and developing a deliverable transition pathway, we are really no closer today than we were a decade ago - indeed, in many respects we are further away. As leaders fail and fall - Howard, Brendan Nelson, Tony Abbott, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and Turnbull - we have squandered a host of growth opportunities, investment, and jobs.
Climate change policy has proved just too big an issue for our politicians and our political system to handle. It is reasonable to doubt the new Scott Morrison government will do any better - indeed, we may slide even further backwards.
For Howard, it was that he, stubbornly, wouldn’t ratify Kyoto, despite his support for an emissions trading scheme and a renewable energy target.
Then Brendan Nelson ran hot and cold on an ETS.
Tony Abbott has held most positions, switching from his initial support for an ETS to an undermining of Turnbull because he was prepared to negotiate with Rudd on an ETS. He opposed Julia Gillard’s carbon tax and the RET, then opposed an emissions intensity scheme, Chief Scientist Alan Finkel’s Clean Energy Target and, most recently, the National Energy Guarantee. While he did initially commit to the Paris emissions reduction targets, he has recently wanted to exit that agreement as well.

Malcolm Turnbull announces he will challenge Tony Abbott for the leadership in 2015. Photo: Andrew Meares

Rudd failed to deliver his promised ETS, baulking, post Copenhagen, to call the promised double dissolution election on the issue, thereby laying the basis for his initial demise.
Gillard switched from total opposition to a carbon price, to an awkward attempt to introduce one, ultimately losing to Rudd, and he, in turn, losing to Abbott on that attempt.
But, perhaps the hardest to understand and accept, was Turnbull. Having introduced an ETS in the Howard days, and then attempting to support Rudd’s efforts before being rolled by Abbott for doing so, he seized the prime ministership with the strong expectation that he would finally deliver.
The expectation was that he would clearly state a climate policy and transition strategy, and then go out and fight for them, both within the government and throughout the community. The electorate would have cut him a lot of slack if he had done so.

John Howard and Kevin Rudd at The Lodge in 2007, after Howard lost the election. Photo: Glen McCurtayne

Electoral support for decisive climate action has fluctuated over the past couple of decades but the majority of voters have consistently been in favour of it, well ahead of our politicians.
In the most recent Lowy poll, almost 60 per cent of voters thought "global warming is a serious and pressing problem" and that "we should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs". About 84 per cent supported renewables, with only 14 per cent believing we should continue to rely on coal and gas.
Inexplicably, while Turnbull did boldly put energy and the environment together under one minister for the first time, he never used that to match those electoral expectations. Indeed, he compounded that weakness with support for the NEG, the fourth best solution, only to finally weaken even that position by attempting to "appease" the Abbott forces, as his leadership became more untenable.
This was further compounded by his leather-jacketed helicopter flights in pursuit of the "dream", rather than the commercial reality, of Snowy Hydro 2.0, and the continuing hint that he would find a way to support a new coal-fired power plant.

New Energy Minister Angus Taylor with Prime Minister Scott Morrison at Government House on Tuesday. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Now, enter Morrison, who carries little or no voter expectations on climate, especially given the entrenched image of him bringing a lump of coal into the Parliament and his warning that "we shouldn’t be afraid".
His first act has been to undo the Turnbull innovation, by splitting the environment and energy portfolios, and ranking them second last, and last, respectively, in his list of new ministers, a clear attempt to downplay the significance of both.
While Morrison has said that he won’t abandon the Paris commitments, he has gone out of his way to try to keep the focus on electricity prices, labelling Energy Minister Angus Taylor as "minister for getting electricity prices down".
Taylor has been a long-term opponent of the RET and wind farms in particular - so it is not sure how he will deliver his assigned task.

Bridget McKenzie and Scott Morrison join Stephen and Annabel Tully to see how the drought has affected their property in Quilpie, south-west Queensland on Monday. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

On his trip this week to drought-stricken regions, Morrison refused to comment on climate, or any link between climate and the severity of the drought, attempting to simplify matters by insisting on an exclusive focus on drought impacts and assistance.
I doubt Morrison will be able to sustain this dichotomy, although they will try to do so through to the next election, simply arguing, essentially by way of a slogan, that a Morrison government will get electricity prices down, while Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s renewable energy targets and strategy will put them up.
In these terms, there will be some reluctance to keep the NEG, because of its linking of energy and emissions reductions, even though it could easily be accepted as simply a framework, that addresses both, with the benefit that it can depoliticise the issue, with this framework being managed by an independent National Security Board.


From a single-father household to journalist, barrister, businessman and politician, it seemed Malcolm Turnbull had his eyes on the PM's office for a long time. 

To keep it, they will make much of the ACCC’s recommendations to toughen up on the "gentailers", default price "guarantees" etc - pretty much where Turnbull left off - but still with a nod in favour of new coal-fired power. Hardly a responsible climate policy.

*John Hewson is a professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU, and a former Liberal opposition leader.

Links

• 'I am not sceptical about climate science': Energy Minister Angus Taylor hits back in new price pledge
• Angus Taylor Signals Further Taxpayer Investment In Existing Coal And Gas
• Climate Change Making Drought Worse, Farmers' Federation Chief Says
• Climate Change Brought Down Another Prime Minister In Australia. Here’s What Happened.
• The Global Rightward Shift On Climate Change
• 'No Real Appetite': Former Farmers Chief Lashes Ministers Over Climate Link To Drought
• A “Middle Finger” To Climate And Renewables: Morrison Draws Fire – And Dismay
• At Last, Maybe A Real Choice On Climate Change
• 'He Will Fail Farmers': Morrison Pressured To Tackle Climate Change As Part Of Drought Pledge
• Australia's Recent Climate Change Policy: A Brief History Of Seven Killings

Rising CO2 Levels Could Push ‘Hundreds Of Millions’ Into Malnutrition By 2050

Carbon Brief - Daisy Dunne

An additional 290 million people could face malnutrition by 2050 if little is done to stop the rise of greenhouse gas emissions, a study finds.

Farmers winnowing wheat crop, Ethiopia, 2004. Credit: Sean Sprague/Alamy Stock Photo.

The increased presence of CO2 in the atmosphere could cause staple crops to produce smaller amounts of nutrients such as zinc, iron and protein, the researchers say.
Using international datasets of food consumption, the study estimates that these changes could cause an additional 175 million people to be zinc deficient and an additional 122 million people to be protein deficient by 2050.
The findings show that malnutrition is most likely to affect parts of the world that are already grappling with food insecurity, such as India, parts of North Africa and the Middle East, the lead author tells Carbon Brief.

Growing problems
Climate change is known to threaten food security by increasing the chances of extreme weather events such as heatwaves and drought – which can cause crop failures.
However, climate change could also threaten food security by worsening malnutrition.
Across the world, humans get the majority of the key nutrients they need from plants. Crops, including cereals, grains and beans, provide humans with 63% of their protein, which is needed to build new body tissue.
Plants also provide humans with 81% of their iron, a nutrient that facilitates the flow of blood around the body, and 63% of their zinc, a nutrient that helps fight off disease. (Other sources of these nutrients include meat and dairy.)
However, recent experiments show that, when food crops are exposed to high levels of CO2, they tend to produce lower amounts of these three key nutrients.
The reason why this happens is still not well understood, says Dr Matthew Smith, a researcher in environmental health from Harvard University and lead author of the new study published in Nature Climate Change. He tells Carbon Brief:

“The prevailing theory for many years has been that higher CO2 causes a faster growth rate [in crops] – which favours carbohydrates rather than other nutrients important for human health that cannot be taken up quickly enough by the roots.”

However, there is also evidence that suggests not all nutrients decrease under higher CO2, notes Smith, meaning the extent of the impact is still an “open question”.

Under pressure
For the new study, the researchers estimated how global levels of malnutrition would be affected when the average concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere reaches 550 parts per million (ppm).
Earlier experiments by the research group have shown that, at this concentration, the iron, protein and zinc content of food crops such as rice, wheat and maize can fall by 3-17%.
Levels of CO2 are currently around 409ppm – and are expected to reach 550ppm in the next 30 to 80 years, depending on how quickly greenhouse gases are – or are not – curbed.
The charts below show the expected carbon emissions (left) and point at which 550ppm is reached (right) for a range of future socioeconomic scenarios known as the “Representative Concentration Pathways” (RCPs). Historical data is also shown in black.

Left: Global carbon emissions (black) and projected emissions under RCP2.6 (purple), RCP4.5 (green), RCP6.0 (blue) and RCP8.5 (red) from 1980-2100. Right: Global CO2 ppm from 1980-2100, with dashed line indicating point at reach concentrations reach 550ppm. Source: Smith & Myers (2018)

Glossary RCP8.5: The RCPs (Representative Concentration Pathways) are scenarios of future concentrations of greenhouse gases and other forcings. RCP8.5 is a scenario of “comparatively high greenhouse gas emissions“ brought about by rapid population growth,… Read More

The charts show how, under a high or “business as usual” scenario (“RCP8.5”), CO2 levels will reach 550ppm by 2050. However, if warming is limited to no more than 2C (“RCP2.6”), the world could avoid hitting the milestone altogether.
For their calculations, the researchers assume that the world follows a “business as usual scenario” and 550ppm is reached by 2050.
To understand how hitting 550ppm could impact malnutrition, the researchers made projections using datasets on food consumption taken from countries across the world.
The datasets contained information on what types of crops are eaten in different parts of the world. In earlier experiments, the researchers found that “C3 crops” (so called because, during photosynthesis, they produce a sugar that has three carbon molecules) are most likely to be affected by rising CO2 levels. Common C3 crops include maize, wheat and rice.

Glossary RCP2.6: The RCPs (Representative Concentration Pathways) are scenarios of future concentrations of greenhouse gases and other forcings. RCP2.6 (also sometimes referred to as “RCP3-PD”) is a “peak and decline” scenario where stringent mitigation… Read More

The results show that, based on estimated population levels for 2050, an additional 175 million people – or 1.9% of the global population in 2050 – could become deficient in zinc and an additional 122 million people (1.3% of the global population) could become protein deficient as CO2 levels exceed 550ppm.
The researchers were not able to estimate the number of additional people that could face iron deficiencies. However, they did find that, by 2050, nearly 1.4 billion women and children under five could live in regions deemed at high risk of iron deficiencies.
At present, more than two billion people are estimated to be deficient in one or more of these nutrients. If crops become less nutritious, these people are likely to face more severe deficiencies, the researchers say, with serious impacts for their health.
Severe iron deficiency, for example, is associated with anemia, a condition where the body lacks enough red blood cells to carry adequate oxygen to body tissue. The condition causes weakness and tiredness and, in extreme cases, can affect the heart and lungs.
Severe zinc deficiency can be fatal if left untreated, while severe protein deficiency can lead to kwashiorkor – a condition causing swelling under the skin that can also be fatal.

Diet distributions
To explore how malnutrition is likely to be distributed across the world, the researchers gave each country a ranking of between one and three for each nutrient – with one indicating a small increase in deficiency and three indicating a large increase.
They then added the results together to give each country a score out of nine. The results are shown on the map below, where dark blue indicates a low score (zero) and dark red indicates a high score (nine).

Global combined risk of lost iron, zinc and protein, assuming average concentrations of CO2 reach 550ppm by 2050. Dark blue indicates a low score (zero), dark red indicates a high score (nine) and indicates no data. Source: Smith & Myers (2018)

The results show that India faces the largest malnutrition increases out of any country. By 2050, an additional 50 million people in India could become zinc deficient, while an additional 502 million women and children under five could face anemia as a result of iron deficiencies.
Other high-risk countries include Algeria, Iraq and Yemen – three countries which are already grappling with higher-than-average rates of malnutrition, Smith says:

“Hundreds of millions of people could become newly deficient in these nutrients – primarily in Africa, southeast Asia, India and the Middle East – potentially contributing to a range of health effects: anemia, wasting, stunting, susceptibility to infectious disease, and complications for mothers and newborns.”

Curbing CO2

Despite the stark findings, there are “many steps that can be taken” to reduce the impact of rising CO2 levels on malnutrition, Smith says:

“Breeding crops for CO2-tolerance or higher nutritional content, increasing [iron] fortification or supplementation programmes, encouraging dietary diversity to include more nutrient dense foods or those less sensitive to CO2 effects, for example. And of course, renewing our global effort to curb CO2 emissions would be the most direct way to help avert potential harm.”

One caveat of the new research is the assumption that current patterns of global food consumption are likely to stay the same until 2050, Smith says:

“We definitely agree that it is highly unlikely that diets will stay static, but we make this assumption simply because we are unsure of which direction diets will go. Dietary forecasting is very uncertain, and it relies primarily on economic projections to determine how diets will change.”

Previous research suggests that low- to middle-income countries are likely to consume more meat and dairy products in the coming decades. If this were to occur, the impact of rising CO2 levels on crops – and thus malnutrition – could be smaller, Smith concedes.
The findings add to previous research showing “the potential health consequences” of rising CO2 levels, says Prof Kristie Ebi, a researcher in public health and climate change from the University of Washington, who was not involved in the study. She tells Carbon Brief:

“The growing body of literature on the impacts of rising CO2 concentrations on the nutritional quality of our food indicates the health consequences could be significant, particularly for poorer populations in Africa and Asia – although everyone could be affected.”

Links

• Impact of anthropogenic CO2 emissions on global human nutrition
• Expect tens of millions of internal climate migrants by 2050, says World Bank
• Global sea levels rising faster than previously thought, study shows
• Mapped: How climate change will slow progress towards curbing malnutrition

Spring Is Coming, And There’s Little Drought Relief In Sight

The Conversation - Jonathan Pollock | Catherine Ganter | David Jones

It’s unlikely NSW will get the sustained rain needed to break the drought. Alex Ellinghausen/AAP

So far, 2018 has been very warm and exceptionally dry over large parts of mainland Australia. The Bureau of Meteorology’s climate outlook for spring, released today, shows that significant widespread relief is unlikely.
The chance of a spring El Niño, along with other climate drivers, is likely to mean below-average rainfall for large parts of the country in the coming months.

A dry winter for most of Australia
Winter rainfall has been below average over most of Australia’s eastern mainland. Large parts of New South Wales are on track to have winter rainfall in the lowest 10% of records. This has compounded drought conditions in the east after mixed rainfall last year and a dry start to 2018 for much of the country.
But it’s not just the lack of rainfall that has made the impact of drought severe. Another factor was the warmer than average daytime temperatures.

Warmest January-August on record for some
The 2017-18 summer average temperature was Australia’s second-warmest in 108 years of records, while autumn was Australia’s fourth-warmest on record. Winter 2018 is likely to be among the five warmest winters on record in terms of maximum temperatures.
Many of the above-average daytime temperatures have been focused over the country’s southeast. In fact, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria are all on track for their warmest maximum temperatures for the January to August period.
The below-average rainfall combined with above-average maximum temperatures resulted in a rapid and intense drying of the landscape. This has led to unusually severe fire weather conditions in July and August – conditions more typically seen at the end of spring than the end of winter.
In contrast, low rainfall, cloud-free skies and dry soils mean it has been colder than usual overnight across most of the country during winter.

Climate conditions favour low rainfall
Will spring see a break in the warmer days and below average rainfall? Probably not. Both the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), can be major influences on Australia’s seasonal rainfall and temperature patterns.
During winter, both ENSO and the IOD were neutral, meaning that neither of them provided a large influence on winter’s weather (so we can’t blame them this time).
However, most international climate models have been forecasting a spring El Niño since June. Sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific have been gradually warming since autumn and are rising towards El Niño thresholds. At the beginning of June the Bureau went on El Niño watch, which indicates a roughly 50% chance of El Niño forming in 2018 – double the usual likelihood. El Niño during spring typically means below-average rainfall across eastern and northern Australia.
Three out of five international models are forecasting that a positive Indian Ocean Dipole event is also possible this spring. A positive IOD during spring typically means below-average rainfall in central and southern Australia. When El Niño and a positive IOD coincide, their drying influences can be exacerbated.

So, what’s the outlook for spring?
With a reasonable chance of both El Niño developing and a positive Indian Ocean Dipole, the outlook for spring shows below-average rainfall is likely over much of the southeast and parts of the northeast and southwest. The rest of the country has a neutral outlook, showing no strong push towards a wetter or drier than average three months.

Inland areas are typically dry at this time of year, so the neutral outlook in the arid interior typically implies that low rainfall is likely. No part of the country favours above-average rainfall in the spring outlook.

Spring days are likely to be warmer than average across Australia, with the highest chances (greater than 80%) over northern and western Australia. Most of the country is likely to have warmer than average nights this spring, except for areas around the Great Australian Bight which have roughly equal chances of warmer or cooler than average minimum temperatures.

What does this mean for the drought and bushfires?
Like the rest of the country, the Bureau is hoping that farmers in drought-affected areas get the rainfall they need soon. But this outlook isn’t the news many want to hear.
Last weekend’s rainfall over northeastern New South Wales and southeastern Queensland was welcomed by most, but unfortunately it was well short of what was required for a recovery from the longer-term rainfall deficits. Many locations on the east coast are well below their average year-to-date rainfall totals.
Rainfall deficiencies for the first seven months of 2018 in areas of western NSW, northwest Victoria and eastern South Australia widely show rainfall totals in the lowest 5% of the 118 years of record. It would take many months of above-average rainfall to return to average levels.
The above average temperatures in 2018 so far, combined with below average rainfall and dry vegetation, mean a higher likelihood of fire activity in parts of southern Australia. The warm and dry outlook for spring means the drought in parts of the country’s east is likely to continue.

Links

• All Models Used By Bureau Now Point To El Nino By The End Of Spring
• Winter is coming, and it's looking mighty mild
• Drought, wind and heat: when fire seasons start earlier and last longer
• The BOM outlook for the weather over the next three months is 'neutral' – here's what that really means
• How to prepare your home for a bushfire – and when to leave
• How climate outlooks are made
• 'We dread the onslaught of summer'
• Record evaporation rates across eastern Australia exacerbate drought
• 'Death certificate': Ex-water chief slams Barnaby Joyce's drought plan
• Can't vote Liberal 'in good conscience': Alex Turnbull blasts climate stance
• 'Barbaric': Adani's giant coal mine granted unlimited water licence for 60 years

Angus Taylor Signals Further Taxpayer Investment In Existing Coal And Gas

The Guardian - Katharine Murphy

New energy minister says government still committed to energy-market interventions if needed

Angus Taylor says he’s a sceptic of green scheme economics. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP 

The new energy minister, Angus Taylor, says he’s not a sceptic about climate science, just the economics of green schemes, and he’s declared renewables are “in my blood” and have an important role in the energy system.
But while overtly backing solar and hydro, but not wind – a technology he’s long opposed – Taylor has also signalled he wants to encourage new investment extending the life of existing coal and gas plants, and upgrading ageing facilities, with an objective of boosting supply.
In his first major speech in his new portfolio, Taylor has recommitted the government to pursuing heavy-handed interventions in the energy market cooked up in the last days of the Turnbull government, including “last resort” divestiture powers to break up power companies if they engage in price gouging.
But while threatening to wield the big stick, Taylor also sent a clear message to power companies he would not use it if prices came down. “The simple truth is that if industry steps up and does the right thing on price, government can step back and focus on other things.”
The new energy minister said an underwriting program, where the government guaranteed finance for new generation projects, would also proceed.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the body that recommended the underwriting proposal to boost supply and competition, has made it clear it did not suggest the scheme as a lifeline for coal, which is what some government MPs want it to be.
In a clear nod to internal pressure, Taylor signalled on Thursday the government was intent on boosting supply, and that meant expanding existing plants, upgrading ageing “legacy” generators, as well as pursuing new “greenfield” projects.
“We need to encourage all of these,” he said. “It’s ironic that in a country with an abundance of natural resources – coal, gas, water and solar – we should be in this position.
“We need to leverage those resources, not leave them in the ground.”
Taylor backed Peter Dutton in last week’s poisonous leadership spill, and the former McKinsey consultant was critical of the national energy guarantee during the internal debate about the policy.
Thursday’s speech was silent on the fate of the Neg, and silent on whether or not Australia should withdraw from the Paris climate treaty, which is a live debate within the Coalition.
Taylor’s predecessor, Josh Frydenberg, pursued the Neg on the basis it would create investment certainty in the energy sector, but Taylor said on Thursday: “There is some naivety in the idea that governments can largely eliminate uncertainty, or should even try.”
“Parliaments or governments can’t bind future parliaments and governments – this would be a breach of the fundamental principle of parliamentary sovereignty.”
But he says his program to reduce energy prices, which includes default pricing for consumers, will be positive for investor confidence, and will create new incentives for investment. “Re-establishing the confidence to invest will be a central goal of these reforms.”
The new prime minister, Scott Morrison, is putting Taylor, an ambitious, conservative up-and-comer, under significant early pressure to produce an outcome on power bills. Setting the performance bar high, the new prime minister has dubbed him the minister for lowering power prices.
Taylor used Thursday’s speech to emphasise that his focus in the portfolio would be on reducing power prices. He said increases in power bills had “eroded the trust of Australians in the capacity of government and politicians to deliver affordable, reliable energy”.
“We need to re-establish this trust.”
The minister gave a nod to recent reductions on wholesale energy prices, which have flowed through to retail prices, noting that prices had turned a corner.
But while there is evidence from market analysts and analysis from the government’s energy bodies that renewables has led the price drop because of a big increase in supply contracted into the market courtesy of the renewable energy target, Taylor attributed the recent reductions to the government’s intervention in the gas market, and regulatory reforms, including forcing retailers to be more transparent about their pricing.
While coal proponents in the Coalition declare new coal investment means lower prices, the Australian Energy Market Commission has predicted prices will fall over the next two years because of the entry of 5,300 MW of new generation capacity into the national electricity market – most of it renewable projects.
But the AEMC has also warned that price reductions won’t last if governments don’t settle an energy policy that provides a stable framework, including incentives for investing in dispatchable power.

Links

• Renewables forecast to halve wholesale energy prices over four years
• Most Australians want more renewables to help lower power prices – poll
• South Australia rides renewables boom to become electricity exporter
• South Australia on track to meet 75% renewables target Liberals promised to scrap
• California moves towards 100% carbon-free electricity after landmark vote
• Claimed power price cuts from energy guarantee are 'virtually meaningless'
• Josh Frydenberg flags two-stage talks to get energy guarantee over the line
• Coalition’s national energy guarantee predicted to drive up power prices
• States threaten to call off energy deal if renewables undermined
• California ups its clean energy game with 100% zero-carbon electricity vote
• Solar panel tech: Robots, floating power plants, and 2-sided panels are coming

Renewables Forecast To Halve Wholesale Energy Prices Over Four Years

The Guardian - Katharine Murphy

Analysis shows 7,200MW of renewables added to grid after closures of coal-fired plants

A solar farm in Port Augusta. Extra capacity commissioned after the closure of large coal-powered generators in South Australia and Victoria is bringing down wholesale energy prices. Photograph: The Guardian 

While the Morrison government has identified lowering power prices as a key early priority, a new analysis says wholesale prices will almost halve over the next four years because of the technology many Coalition conservatives oppose – renewables.
The latest renewable energy index compiled by Green Energy Markets confirms analysis by the Energy Security Board that wholesale electricity prices are on the way down because of an addition of 7,200 megawatts of extra large-scale supply from renewable energy.
Tristan Edis from Green Energy Markets says the political debate in Canberra is lagging behind practical developments in the national electricity market. The national energy guarantee was scuppered in part because government conservatives were concerned the mechanism didn’t do enough to reduce power prices, and because of claims that renewables were inflating power bills.
“What I think is extraordinary given recent political events is that we’ve actually turned the corner on wholesale electricity prices and they’re now headed downward and will continue to decline substantially over the next few years,” Edis told Guardian Australia. “This doesn’t seem to have sunken in at all in our political debate.”
The new analysis charts movements in prices in the energy market. It says prices began to rise when large amounts of supply were withdrawn from the market in South Australia with the closure of the Northern power station, and because of the closure of the Hazelwood plant in Victoria.

It says new investment in large-scale renewable energy projects during that period had stalled because of Tony Abbott’s efforts to wind back the renewable energy target. “It was only after prices began spiking upwards with the announced closure of Hazelwood that we saw significant commitments to construct new large-scale renewable energy supply.”
The analysis says price reductions have followed more renewable projects coming on stream. “Prices have since continued to decline in anticipation of increasing amounts of renewable energy supply reaching construction completion and contributing power to the grid.”
Edis says the trends in the market aren’t connected to Canberra’s debate about coal versus renewables – “this is a simple case of economics 101” – meaning taht when supply is withdrawn, prices rise. “It seems we’ve dumped a prime minister based on completely false pretences.”
Morrison has told his newly appointed energy minister, Angus Taylor, that his pressing priority is driving power price reductions. The national energy guarantee that proved catalytic in Turnbull’s demise is on ice, and the new prime minister has split the environment and energy portfolios in recognition of the Liberal party’s difficulty reaching a landing point on an energy policy that includes emissions reduction.
Taylor, a conservative and former McKinsey consultant, has previously campaigned against renewable energy projects – a posture that has alarmed people in the renewables sector and environment groups.

Links

• South Australia rides renewables boom to become electricity exporter
• South Australia on track to meet 75% renewables target Liberals promised to scrap
• California moves towards 100% carbon-free electricity after landmark vote
• Claimed power price cuts from energy guarantee are 'virtually meaningless'
• Most Australians want more renewables to help lower power prices – poll
• Josh Frydenberg flags two-stage talks to get energy guarantee over the line
• Coalition’s national energy guarantee predicted to drive up power prices
• States threaten to call off energy deal if renewables undermined
• California ups its clean energy game with 100% zero-carbon electricity vote
• Solar panel tech: Robots, floating power plants, and 2-sided panels are coming

Climate Change Making Drought Worse, Farmers' Federation Chief Says

The Guardian - Gabrielle Chan

Fiona Simson says people have been tiptoeing around the subject for too long and it is time for a national strategy

National Farmers Federation president Fiona Simson has acknowledged Indigenous Australians as Australia’s ‘first farmers’ and called for a national strategy on drought. Photograph: Alex Ellinghausen/AAP 

The president of the National Farmers’ Federation, Fiona Simson, has declared that climate change is making drought worse in Australia and says tiptoeing around the subject does not do regional communities any good.
“It is the effect of climate change we need to be aware of that makes the impacts of a drought even worse,” she told the National Press Club.
“As a community, we want to talk about it and the more discussions we have about and the more open people are in talking about it, then the less uncomfortable it becomes.
“But we absolutely have to talk about it and some of the issues that people tiptoe around because they’re worried about offending people or having a discussion about it, then it doesn’t do us any good as a community.”
Simson, a farmer on the Liverpool Plains, described agriculture as a diverse industry and she was highly critical of much of the current media drought coverage of the broken farmer dependent on handouts.

“I use those words “managing drought” deliberately because managing the drought is exactly what we are doing,” she said.
“Many farmers, including me, take offence to the betrayals of the broken-down, handout dependent farmer profile peddled by many members of the media. That simply is not us.”
She was critical of the government for allowing regional communities to cope with drought in the absence of a “comprehensive national framework to deal with drought”.
“Successive governments have had a go, but we are still without certainty that a national strategy would actually provide. In fact, agriculture in its entirety is to date without a whole-of-government national strategy for plan at all.”
In another significant shift in the NFF, Simson also described Indigenous Australians as Australia’s “first farmers” in both her opening acknowledgement of country and her address.
“May I acknowledge Australia’s first farmers, in particular the Ngunnawal people on whose land we meet today,” she said. “I pay my respects to elders past and and acknowledge their historic and continuing role in what is a great story of Australian agriculture.”
“Drought is not a new phenomenon for farmers. Since farming first started under the auspices of our First Australians, drought has been a part of the landscape and a regular part of the farm business cycle.”
Climate change has been a vexed topic for the farm lobby for the past two decades. In 2007, when then prime minister John Howard and Labor opposition leader Kevin Rudd both agreed on action, the NFF said climate change might be the “greatest threat” confronting farmers and their ability to put food on Australian table and the lobby group backed an emissions trading scheme.

Australia's climate wars: a decade of dithering

After Malcolm Turnbull’s first leadership spill in 2009 over emissions policies which saw Tony Abbott win the Liberal leadership, bipartisanship on climate change ended and the NFF went quiet until Simson took the presidency. In 2017, she recognised that climate change posed a significant challenge for Australian farmers and called for cost-efficient emissions reductions.

Fiona Simson told the National Press Club farmers were “are at the front line of climate change”. 

As parts of Australia slide into their seventh year of drought and media coverage places increasing pressure on politicians, Simson’s address was the NFF’s most forthright message on climate change yet to government.
It comes less than two weeks after Coalition’s latest energy policy, the National Energy Guarantee, preceded the leadership coup against Malcolm Turnbull.
Simson said while every drought was different, this season was the worst on her farm since 1965 and had “taken many experienced and savvy farmers by surprise”.
“We are at the front line of climate change, increasingly erratic seasons, out-of-season rainfall or no rainfall at all and longer, hotter summers.”
But Simson also pushed back against the suggestion that reducing emissions required culling huge livestock numbers – a suggestion covered in major newspapers that she described as “totally histrionic”.
“I’m sure there are those out there reading that thinking it’s true when you have the peak red meat body (Meat and Livestock Australia) forecasting zero [emissions] by 2030 and a huge drop between 2005 and 15 on current modelling, so I think for me it is about having a conversation as a community,” she said.

Links

• 'No real appetite': former farmers chief lashes ministers over climate link to drought
• Australia Is Devastated By Drought, Yet It Won't Budge On Climate Change
• Australia Struggles With A Devastating Drought While The Government Ignores Climate Change
• Great Southern Drought: Australian Farmers Crippled, Climate Action Stalled
• Farming Impact Of Australia's Worst Drought In Living Memory
• Farmers Need To Call Out Climate Risks
• National Farmers Federation Says Electricity Best Place To Make Emissions Cuts
• If we want strong climate action, we need to get the moderate Liberals on board
• 'Big call': minister refuses to link drought to climate change on Q&A
• Farmers challenge Nationals' claim drought unrelated to climate change
• 'Too early to say' if Coalition will back clean energy target, Frydenberg says
• Barnaby Joyce juggles coal as Labor and Coalition clash over blackouts – as it happened

Climate Change Brought Down Another Prime Minister In Australia. Here’s What Happened.

Washington Post - Joshua Busby

This 2016 photo shows dead coral on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Researchers think global warming causes heat-induced bleaching. (Greg Torda/ARC Center of Excellence/AP)

In Australia, Scott Morrison was sworn in as prime minister (PM) on Friday night, after an internal party revolt that led to the downfall of Malcolm Turnbull, who had been PM since September 2015. Conservative backbenchers within Turnbull’s own right-leaning Liberal party rejected his proposal to address climate change through an emissions-reduction target, and challenged his leadership.
Why is climate such a politically explosive issue in Australia? Depending on whose count, this is the third or seventh time that an Australian prime minister has been brought down by climate issues.
Australia is quite vulnerable to climate change, but complicated domestic politics have prevented the country from addressing the problem. This illustrates just how difficult it is for individual countries to develop policies to mitigate climate change — the bottom-up approach favored under the Paris Agreement.

Australia suffers greatly from climate change
New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, is in a major drought, with devastating effects on agriculture. The impact of the drought was captured vividly in photos of flocks of emus, large flightless birds, recently mobbing a town in search of water and food. And vast stretches of the Great Barrier Reef died in recent years as a result of coral bleaching brought on by record high water temperatures.
Australia is also one of the world’s largest coal producers — by one account responsible for 37 percent of global exports — and the coal lobby through the Minerals Council is especially politically influential. Industry lobby groups, like those in the United States, opposed action on climate change and cultivated partisan division on the issue.
Although a growing majority of Australians favor action on climate change, a strong, influential minority opposes taking action. A spring 2015 survey by the Pew Research Center found that just 16 percent of Liberal party supporters thought climate change was a serious problem, compared with 58 percent of Labor and 79 percent of Green party supporters.
There are also large generational differences between younger and older Australians. A 2018 Lowy Institute poll found that 70 percent of Australians ages 18 to 44 considered global warming a “serious and pressing problem” compared with only 49 percent of those older than 44.

The problem has claimed several PMs already 
Political instability in Australia’s rough-and-tumble parliamentary democracy has been pervasive, with climate issues often at the heart of recent turmoil. In the past decade, Australia has had five prime ministers — Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Rudd again briefly, Tony Abbott and Turnbull. Nobody served a full term.
The most recent kerfuffle is the latest in a string of political fights. Most recently, Turnbull, facing resistance from his own party, backpedaled on legislation to curb carbon emissions under a plan called the National Energy Guarantee (NEG).
Sensing vulnerability, Turnbull opponents challenged his leadership. Turnbull toppled Abbott, a fellow Liberal, in a similar manner in September 2015. With elections looming in May 2019 that the opposition Labor Party looks likely to win, Turnbull’s internal opponents decided the time was ripe to oust him.
Abbott, though somewhat a climate skeptic, committed Australia in August 2015 to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The NEG proposal was an attempt to legislate those targets and also address high electricity prices and periodic blackouts that have affected parts of the country. Australia’s emissions have been rising since 2012.
The inability to legislate Australia’s climate commitments through the NEG generated swift condemnation by the wider Australian business community, citing worries about policy uncertainty.

There’s a Trump effect, in part 
President Trump’s announcement last year that the United States intended to withdraw from the Paris Agreement emboldened Abbott to break with the more moderate Turnbull — and reject the target Abbott previously set as prime minister. In July, he called for Australia to leave the accord as well. He used the U.S. decision as justification: “Absent America, my government would not have signed up to the Paris treaty, certainly not with the current target.”
The crackup over climate commitments is not a new story in Australia, and controversy over emissions trading schemes has also pushed out other leaders. Arguably, disputes about climate change contributed to the downfall of Labor leaders Rudd and Gillard in the mid-2000s. There appears to be a center of cross-party support for climate action and even greater support for renewables. But Australians, like Americans, seem reluctant to pay for expensive climate policies.
Turnbull’s measure would have passed with Labor support, but Labor and the Greens wanted an even more ambitious climate commitment. They also saw a general election they are likely to win — and little reason to hand Turnbull a victory that might have restored his electoral fortunes.

Climate politics got even more difficult without U.S. leadership
Australia’s political challenges underscore the difficulties the Paris Agreement now faces. Although the United States is still formally part of the Paris Agreement until November 2020, its withdrawal of political support makes it harder for other countries to make costly commitments of their own — as Abbott’s declaration after Trump’s Paris withdrawal illustrates. Brazil may follow suit if Jair Bolsonaro is elected in October.
The Paris Agreement was based on the premise that the enforcement capacity of the international community is limited. Another top-down climate treaty with commitments negotiated by diplomats — such as the Kyoto Protocol — would not work.
Instead, Paris substituted “National Determined Contributions,” where each country determined for itself what it thought it could do. Although these commitments were inadequate, the idea was to get a virtuous circle, to ramp up collective ambition and efforts to avoid dangerous climate change.
That isn’t really happening now, and as we see with Australia, the problems are not limited to the United States. The international community is sending mixed signals about the importance of this issue, which has changed the domestic political calculus in a number of countries.
But, as I argued recently in Foreign Affairs, climate change is going to become more — not less — salient over time. Australia’s crisis shows that, paradoxically, demand for action on climate change is likely to grow, both to address pollution, the underlying cause of climate change, but also the consequences of inaction.

*Joshua Busby is an associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. His piece with Nigel Purvis, “Climate Leadership in Uncertain Times,” is forthcoming from the Atlantic Council.

Links

• The Liberal party is self-destructing over energy. Here's what you need to know
• Australia's recent climate change policy: A brief history of seven killings
• Climate change impacts in Australia
• Broken Hill plagued by emus as they head into town in search of food, water
• Damage to Great Barrier Reef From Global Warming Is Irreversible, Scientists Say
• Coal Exports by Country
• Australia is devastated by drought, yet it won't budge on climate change
• Lowy Institute Poll shows Australians’ support for climate action at its highest level in a decade
• Australian Prime Minister Abandons Climate Targets, Bowing to Party Pressure
• Australia’s Emissions Projections To A 2 Degree Target
• The Paris agreement’s emissions goals may be in trouble, with or without U.S. participation

The Global Rightward Shift On Climate Change

The Atlantic - Robinson Meyer

President Trump may be leading the rich, English-speaking world to scale back environmental policies.

President Donald Trump speaks next to then-Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull at the White House in February. Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Last Thursday, Malcolm Turnbull was the prime minister of Australia. By the end of this week, he’ll be just another guy in Sydney.
Turnbull was felled by climate-change policy. His attempt at a moderate, even milquetoast energy bill—which included some mild cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions—proved too aggressive for his co-partisans. On Friday, members of Australia’s center-right Liberal Party voted him out of office.
Pity for Turnbull, though at least he can he can trudge home to his mansion on Sydney Harbor. And pity for Australia, which lately has had some trouble keeping its prime ministers in office. (It’s churned through six of them since 2007.) Yet even setting that context aside, Turnbull’s tumble remains a disquieting sign for anyone hoping for an aggressive global climate policy. In Australia—where global warming has contributed to the die-off of half the coral in the Great Barrier Reef since 2016—even a mild climate bill could not pass under a conservative government.
It points to an emerging pattern: Moderate national leaders—on both the center-left and center-right—in some of the world’s richest and most advanced countries are finding it far easier to talk about climate change than to actually fight it.
At a basic level, this pattern holds up, well, everywhere. Every country except the United States supports the Paris Agreement on climate change. But no major developed country is on track to meet its Paris climate goals, according to the Climate Action Tracker, an independent analysis produced by three European research organizations. Even Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom—where right-wing governments have made combatting climate change a national priority—seem likely to miss their goals.
Simply put: This kind of failure, writ large, would devastate Earth in the century to come. The world would blow its stated goal of limiting atmospheric temperature rise. Heatwaves might regularly last for six punishing weeks, sea levels could soar by feet in a few short decades, and certain fragile ecosystems—like the delicate Arctic permafrost or the kaleidoscopic plenty of coral reefs—would disappear from the planet entirely.
Australia’s recent instability further complicates this unease. The global climate action of 2016 may be producing something like a worldwide climate backlash—especially in countries with powerful fossil-fuel interests, like Australia and Canada. Or—far more worryingly for climate advocates—these changes in policy may be trickling down from the biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases of them all: the United States.
Take Canada. In 2015, Justin Trudeau campaigned for prime minister by citing his support for a national carbon price. (A carbon price is a type of climate policy that charges polluters for every ton of heat-trapping gas they dump into the atmosphere.) After winning the election, Trudeau took a compromise strategy on fossil fuels, proposing an economy-wide carbon price while endorsing the construction of several massive new oil-export pipelines.
Two years later, Trudeau’s carbon-pricing scheme is in trouble. The government has already slashed the ambition of its initial proposal. The Conservative Party, which opposes Trudeau, has dubbed the carbon price a “tax on everything” and its leader says a future government would repeal any carbon price. The new premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, says he will fight the carbon price when it takes effect in January of next year.
It seems likely that the 2019 elections in Canada—in which Trudeau faces reelection—will hinge in part on what voters think of the carbon price. While that vote is still more than a year away, Trudeau’s Liberal Party has lost its early lead in polling and is now essentially tied with the Conservative Party.
But political opposition is not the only reason Trudeau has watered down his plan. His party seems to have real concerns about the economic consequences of the policy. In order to avoid putting any one country at a competitive disadvantage, global governments vowed to fight climate change together in 2015. But President Donald Trump abrogated this informal arrangement. Since taking office, he ravaged American climate policy, repealing his predecessor’s pollution-reduction rules on cars, trucks, and power plants. Coupled with Trump’s new tariffs and trade policy, a carbon tax could ding Canadian competitiveness.
This month, Trudeau’s government announced that it will tax only 20 percent of carbon emissions, not the planned 30 percent. Some Trump-threatened industries, including cement and steelmaking, will only see 10 percent of their emissions taxed, according to The Globe and Mail.
“If the countries with whom we are competing—and especially that big one to the south of us—do not have that kind of a [carbon tax] system in place, then you are having your hands tied behind your back,” Dennis Darby, the president of a Canadian manufacturing organization, told that paper.
Yet even as he fights for his political life, Trudeau has found it easy to keep supporting new fossil-fuel infrastructure. In May, his government purchased the Trans Mountain pipeline project, which will likely assure its construction. The pipeline, which is opposed by environmental groups and several indigenous nations, will let Canada easily export hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day to Asia.
If Trudeau loses next year, and conservatives repeal his carbon tax, then his government’s climate legacy will be a pipeline, not a reduction in emissions. And if Canada abandons its climate policy, then it will follow the path set by another Anglophone petit petrostate: Australia.
Oz is the only country in the world to adopt an ambitious price on carbon pollution and then promptly repeal it. Its aggressive climate policy—adopted by the left-leaning Labor Party in 2012—was repealed by Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s rightwing government two years later.
Which is to say that Australian climate policy is already weird and mangled—and, indeed, that Australian energy policy as a whole is weird and mangled. Australia should have cheap electricity: It is very sunny, and very windy, and its miners haul roughly $50 billion in U.S. dollars of coal out of the ground every year. Yet recently Aussies have been paying some of the highest power prices in the world. Since 2015, household power bills have doubled in cost in some states. Electricity in Sydney is now more than twice as expensive as it is in New York.
Turnbull’s downfall has to be understood in light of that policy disaster. The former prime minister spent months trying to put together a “National Energy Guarantee” that would address its electricity crisis, mostly by making Obamacare-style improvements to the power market. The same bill also legislated some modest emissions cuts that were promised under the Paris Agreement.
Rightwing lawmakers, many of whom are allied with Australia’s booming fossil-fuel industry, seized on the climate aspects of the legislation. So last week, Turnbull abandoned it. The embarrassment ultimately led to his ouster: By Friday, his party’s right wing had voted to replace him.
So Australia’s energy policy is now again adrift. Its new prime minister, Scott Morrison, is perceived in the country as being on the center-right, and he’s said he won’t abandon the Paris Agreement. But Australian carbon emissions have been rising for six years and it’s totally unclear whether it will meet its greenhouse-gas targets. The new prime minister has also already appointed a far-right opponent of renewable energy to lead Australia’s ministry of energy and environment.
What else drove this coup? Look to a July speech made by Tony Abbott, a former Australian prime minister and by far its most conservative leader this decade. He exhorted Australia to follow President Trump’s lead and leave the Paris Agreement—which is notable, since Abbott himself signed the agreement. But the situation had changed: “Absent America, my government would not have signed up to the Paris treaty, certainly not with the current target,” he said.
“Withdrawing from the Paris agreement,” he continued, “would be the best way to keep prices down and employment up; and, to save our party from a political legacy that could haunt us for the next decade at least.”
Abbott  then engaged in a bit of Trumpianism, rejecting many of the conclusions of mainstream climate science. “Storms are not more severe; droughts are not more prolonged; floods are not greater; and fires are not more intense than a century ago.” (These claims are respectively false, likely false, debatable, and false.)
All this does not bode well for advocates of climate action.Extreme weather is battering Australia on all fronts: Carbon-warmed oceans are plundering its Great Barrier Reef, and a record-breaking drought is ravaging the country’s well-populated southeast. Yet even its center-right-led, middling attempt at a climate policy is withering on the vine. On Monday, in one of his first public appearances since taking office, Prime Minister Morrison declined to comment on whether climate change is intensifying the country’s drought. “I’m going to leave that debate,” he said, “for another day.”

Links

• The victims of climate change are already here
• Has climate change intensified 2017’s western wildfires
• Scott Morrison sticks to Paris climate deal
• 'No real appetite': former farmers chief lashes ministers over climate link to drought
• Here’s How Far the World Is From Meeting Its Climate Goals
• After Decades of Losing Ice, Antarctica Is Now Hemorrhaging It
• Syria Is Joining the Paris Agreement. Now What?
• Since 2016, Half of All Coral in the Great Barrier Reef Has Died