03/03/2018

Shorten Says Talk About Adani Mine 'Dumbing Down Climate Debate'

The Guardian -  |

Labor leader dodges questions about plan to revoke Adani licence if he wins next election
Bill Shorten says ripping up a contract made by a previous government ‘would be sovereign risk’. Photograph: Daniel Mcculloch/AAP
Bill Shorten has repeatedly denied that he told colleagues he intended to ban the Adani coal mine, but dodged questions about whether he intended to revoke its licence if Labor wins the next election.
Shorten was asked on Friday to clarify Labor’s position after the businessman and environmentalist Geoff Cousins this week gave a detailed account of private discussions he had with the Labor leader over December and January.
Cousins said that after a tour of the Great Barrier Reef and the Adani mine site in January, Shorten signalled his support for Labor revoking Adani’s licence based on concern about the impact of the project on the reef, on groundwater and endangered species. He then indicated he would make an announcement to that effect imminently.
The Labor leader faced questions while campaigning in Devonport on Friday ahead of the Tasmanian election on Saturday, including whether he was prepared to announce Labor would revoke the project’s licence if it won government.
Shorten denied on Friday that he wanted to ban the project, and had to be talked out of that position by colleagues.
But the Labor leader did signal publicly after his trip with Cousins, without locking in to a specific option, that he was intending to adopt a harder line against the controversial Queensland coal project.
Shorten also made it clear internally following his discussions with the former president of the Australian Conservation Foundation that he wanted to toughen Labor’s position on Adani, and explore options within the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act for stopping or limiting the project.
Labor’s pivot on Adani went for discussion to shadow cabinet in early February.
Guardian Australia has been reporting since January that there are a range of internal views about how hard to go – and some players, including the CFMEU and the frontbencher Anthony Albanese, have argued publicly against stopping a project which has already been through environmental approvals.
Some Labor figures have been worried about triggering a backlash about sovereign risk, others about the political impact in Queensland. Some who are opposed to the project are concerned there is not a clear legal pathway to that policy.
Legal advice supplied by Cousins and the ACF is considered by some Labor figures to be overly optimistic.
Cousins’s comments have been deeply embarrassing for Shorten and uncomfortable for the ALP given the party is currently facing off against the Greens in the Batman byelection in Melbourne.
Shorten on Friday said he’d made no secret of the fact he wasn’t a fan of the Adani project.
“But what I’ve also said – and I’ve also said it to the Australian Conservation Foundation and right through Queensland – is I respect the principle of Australian politics that if one government enters into contracts then a future government can’t simply rip them up. To do so would be sovereign risk.”
Shorten said he did not believe the project would materialise, citing Adani missing deadlines and his assessment that the project didn’t stack up “financially, commercially, or environmentally”.
Shorten denied that he wanted to ban the project and had to be talked out of that position by colleagues. “You can’t simply ban it and create a sovereign risk ... No party, even the Greens political party, can simply say they can ban something – you have to adhere to the law.”
Asked if he had said – at any stage – that he wanted to revoke the licence of the Adani mine, Shorten said: “No prime minister can simply ignore the law, no prime minister worth their salt should simply engage in massive sovereign risk.”
Shorten said Adani had become “ground zero for a whole lot of other arguments” and accused others of “dumbing down the debate about climate change and the future of mining to one mine project”.

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As Biodiversity Declines, So Does Public Attention

Anthropocene Magazine - 



There are two environmental crises right now: climate change and biodiversity loss. Why are people, particularly journalists, only paying attention to one of them?
That disconcerting question is raised by a new analysis of research funding, scientific publications and press coverage over the past quarter-century. In that time, academic interest in both climate and biodiversity have swelled — but in the mainstream press, biodiversity is an also-ran, receiving no more attention now than in 1992.
What we ought to make of that trend isn’t immediately evident. It certainly isn’t a call for climate change to receive less attention, says Pierre Legagneux, a biologist at the University of Quebec in Rimouski and lead author of the analysis, which was published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. But in a time of mounting species extinctions, extirpations and population declines, it’s worrisome.
“The science, the challenges and the problems associated with biodiversity issues are not likely reaching the public,” write Legagneux and colleagues, who call this shortfall a “biodiversity communication deficit.”
The researchers found that climate change received 3.3 times more coverage than biodiversity between 1992 and 2016, with interest diverging sharply after 2006; in 2016, newspapers mentioned climate eight times for ever mention of biodiversity. While their analysis — which focused on English-language scientific press, funders in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, and 12 prominent online newspapers — was not exhaustive, it appears emblematic.
In 2012, some 126 nations joined the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, a biodiversity-focused effort coordinated by the United Nations and patterned after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Member nations have been slow to pay their dues; the IPBES cut its budget by one-third for 2018, postponed its planned reports, and scrapped essential capacity-building and policy-support funding. Meanwhile a recent analysis of Google searches found declining interest biodiversity — something those researchers attributed to biodiversity being too wonky and complicated a concept to resonate with most people.
That’s quite possible, say Legagneux and colleagues, who think biodiversity’s proponents ought to improve their messaging — rather than “biodiversity decline,” think “the burning library of life” — and make more explicit its links to food production, human health, and other things people care about. Perhaps climate change receives more attention because it’s perceived as more urgent, but the urgency of biodiversity loss is being neglected.
Legagneux’s team didn’t look at social media or online-only news, so it’s possible that biodiversity receives more attention there than in traditional outlets. They also didn’t analyze trends for keywords like “nature” or “environment,” which overlap with biodiversity and might well receive more attention. Should that be the case, it would underscore biodiversity’s messaging problems.
Whatever is responsible, time is running short. “Our house is burning down and we’re blind to it,” said French president Jacques Chirac in 2002. Now, say Legagneux’s team, “our house is still burning and we only have one eye on it.”

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How Climate Change Is Our Military’s Most Threatening Enemy

Herald Sun - Charles Miranda

AS Cyclone Gita moved into the South Western Pacific corridor two weeks ago, on Russell Hill in Canberra Defence Department officials began reviewing contingency plans for worst case scenarios.
By the time the category 5 struck the region, RAAF humanitarian relief plans were well advanced and led to six flights to Tonga by a giant C-17A Globemaster carrying 140,000kg of humanitarian aid and the deployment of 30 ADF and civilian disaster response personnel.
In the historic capital Nuku’alofa, century-old churches, shops, homes and the parliament building were flattened forcing 3000 people into temporary shelter.
At the request of the Fijian Government, overflight missions were also made by the RAAF’s AP-3C Orion spy plane to assess damage to outlying islands in the southern Lau group.
New Zealand’s military also swung into action with 12 tonnes of aid for the region while in the United States, President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency in American Samoa allowing his Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide equipment and resources to help the 50,000 residents there recover.
Emergency aid pallets unloaded from RAAF C-17A Globemaster at Tonga’s Fua’amotu International Airport in the wake of Tropical Cyclone Gita. Picture: Defence
It is exactly this type of widespread devastation scenario that has prompted a parliamentary inquiry which will later this month report on the implications of climate change for Australia’s national security.
The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Senate committee probe, which began last June, has painted a fairly bleak picture where category 5 cyclone responses are the norm rather than the exception.
Indeed such is the ever-increasing regularity of such storms in New Zealand, scientists are looking at creating a sixth cyclone category to capture new weather pattern ferocities.
This is not a debate about climate change and its predicted future apocalyptic consequences as described in some quarters, but rather about what is happening right now and its worse-case scenario knock-on effect of mass migration of displaced persons, rising seas already threatening coastlines and conflict over resources namely water.
Aid agency Care Australia staff distributing aid in Tonga post Cyclone Gita. Picture: Supplied
The impetus for Australia’s inquiry stemmed from a 2015 report by the US Department of Defense which concluded the impact of climate change from increased natural disasters, refugee flow and conflict was already occurring and further instability was likely.
“I think we’ll been using the ‘once-in-a-100-year storm’ phrase for such weather events more often than every 100 years,” former Australian Defence Force chief and retired Royal Australian Navy admiral Chris Barrie told News Corp Australia, referring to a descriptor used for the storm that this week hammered Canberra.
The now honorary professor of strategic defence studies said storms and events like Cyclone Gita will happen more often and questioned the attitude by some in government and the public that whatever happened the ADF would just clean it up.
He said with just 58,500 personnel the resources and capacity to respond were finite and greater action should have been done years ago, most recently in 2014 when any mention of climate effects on national security had to be omitted from the Defence White Paper because of the very public denials of then Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
He said thankfully those attitude’s within whole of government were now changing and in Australia planning was underway to deal with climate-security from heatwaves, shifting rainfall patterns and flooding, rising sea levels, bushfire extremes and property and infrastructure.
Damage in Tonga's capital of Nuku'alofa after Cyclone Gita and locals woke to scenes of devastation on February 13 after the most powerful cyclone ever recorded in that country. Picture: AFP
ADF Sergeant Sammy Melville cradles a baby evacuated from the Island of Tanna in Vanuatu during tropical Cyclone Pam in 2015. Picture: Supplied
“Military forces around the globe perceive climate change as a threat multiplier because its impacts can seriously undermine individual and societal wellbeing,” he said.
“The anticipated impacts will affect the availability of food, water and energy creating basic insecurities, as well as fostering migratory movements forced on people by sea level rises and the greater frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as storms, floods, and heatwaves. These pressures have the potential to lead to conflict.”
In May 2016, the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change, a network of serving and retired military personnel formed in 2009 to look at the climate security implications, cited the disappearance of glaciers on the Tibetan plateau which fed freshwater into China, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan among others as a typical potential flashpoint.
India has since built a fence and has armed patrols on the Bangladeshi border. But worse-case scenario would be mass migration of tens of millions of people trying to get to Australia and New Zealand from this Pacific Rim.
Department of Home Affairs deputy secretary Linda Geddes, who has worked in the ADF, Defence Intelligence and Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, also recognises the threat in what she describes as complex and unpredictable possible mass migration.
Smoke visible from Kyeemagh Beach Baths, rising off an out-of-control bushfire burning in the Royal National Park. Picture: Jenny Evans
“While the department’s critical functions have business continuity plans that are activated when there is significant disruption to normal business, climate change effects could permanently alter normal business including the accessibility of assets and capability and the nature of challenges to our management of the border and migration,” she has concluded in her submission to the parliamentary inquiry.
The Hawaii-headquartered US Pacific Command (USPACOM), to which Australia has an unspecified number of ADF seconded staff, has now integrated Australia, Canada and New Zealand into its climate-security emergency mobilisation plans including allowing US troops based in Australia to assist in an emergency here.
It concluded: “The Department of Defense sees climate change as a present security threat, not strictly a long-term risk. We are already observing the impacts of climate change in shocks and stressors to vulnerable nations and communities, including in the United States, and in the Arctic, Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America.”
Australia’s Defence Department has equally painted a bleak picture from a “threat multiplier” climate change as it now rushed to “embed” the forecast into all future military planning.
“However, the current most likely forecast climate changes may require higher levels of commitment that may create concurrency pressures for Defence from as early as the middle of the next decade or earlier if climate change related impacts on security threats accelerate,” Defence concluded.

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