04/05/2018

Author Jeff Goodell On His New Book And Why He Wishes Climate Change Was A Hoax

AFR - Lisa Murray

Jeff Goodell: "The Adani coal mine is arguably the stupidest energy project in the world right now." Peter Braig
Jeff Goodell strolls into Kensington Street Social looking tanned and relaxed in a black T-shirt and matching blazer, with a backpack slung over his shoulder.
I am less relaxed having just finished his latest book, The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking cities, and the Remaking of the Civilised World.
The tan, I discover, comes straight from the Great Barrier Reef where Goodell, who has written six books and is a contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine, has been diving with his 15-year-old daughter, Grace, ahead of the Sydney Writers Festival this weekend.
We order wine as I ask what he thinks about the government's recently announced half-billion-dollar rescue package for the reef that will be part of next week's federal budget.
"Places like Sydney have a lot of money so they're going to be able to adapt in interesting ways," says Goodell. Peter Braig












"It's like giving someone a band-aid for cancer. It's not addressing the problem. The problem is burning coal," he says.
"No one is complaining about taking care of some of these secondary causes and there needs to be investment in that stuff but to the degree that it's political cover for the real action, that's a big problem."
Goodell has been writing about the coal industry and climate change for over a decade and this is his fourth trip to Australia. On one of the most memorable trips in 2011, he recalls being holed up in a "shack of a hotel" in Proserpine just as Cyclone Yasi hit the north Queensland coast.
His latest book, which was included in The Washington Post's 50 best non-fiction books of 2017, tackles the issue of rising sea levels. Goodell travelled to 12 countries speaking with scientists, politicians, real estate developers and those living in flood-prone areas in Miami, Venice, Rotterdam and Lagos about how they were preparing and adapting for the changes. It is estimated that as ice sheets feel the heat from global warming, sea levels could rise up to 2.4 metres by 2100 after an increase of just 15cm in the 20th century.
"Australia is behind the curve in a pretty profound way," Goodell warns. "I don't think there's much thinking going on about seriously mitigating the risk of sea level rise."
Jeff Goodell says the government's rescue package is "like giving someone a band-aid for cancer". Alamy
He points to government support for Adani's plans to invest in a large coal mine in Queensland's Galilee basin.
"The Adani coal mine is arguably the stupidest energy project in the world right now. Mining coal in Australia to ship to India to power Bangladesh, which is one of the most at-risk nations in the world from climate change and the government is supporting this. If you're going to put your finger on why we humans are in trouble, it's stuff like that."

Creative solutions
Goodell says he was walking along Manly Beach and found himself contemplating that a sea level rise of one metre could wipe out the Sydney landmark.
"I remember sitting at Apple and thinking this is so boring," says Goodell. Peter Braig
While places like Manly Beach or Circular Quay would probably be defended, Goodell says cities around the world will have to operate "a kind of triage".
"What are we going to try and save and what are we going to let go? Where are we going to spend the money?
"Places like Sydney have a lot of money so they're going to be able to adapt in interesting ways and find creative solutions," he says in an effort to lighten the mood.
But the moment is fleeting.
"We deal with uncertainty about risk all the time," Goodell says. Wolter Peeters



"It's not like everything's OK and then there's sharks in the Sydney Opera House. It's a slow-motion disaster. The real concern is the accumulating economic costs over the next decade or two."
Outside, the sun is shining ominously on a warmer-than-average day for May after Sydney's hottest April on record. But diners inside the Chippendale restaurant are oblivious. There is a noisy, social atmosphere to this warehouse-style bistro with the clatter of the open kitchen, slightly too loud background music and energetic table conversation bouncing off the concrete walls.
As our tartare of kingfish arrives, I ask Goodell, who is staying in the Old Clare Hotel upstairs, whether he considers himself an environmental activist.
"Not at all," he says quickly.
"We're really going to have to change the way we live with water," says Goodell. Peter Braig
"I write about it because I think it's a great story. How we're going to reinvent our energy system and how we're going to deal with this rapidly changing climate that we're creating for ourselves is the great story of our time."

Apple manuals
Goodell grew up in Sunnyvale, California, but goes out of his way to downplay his green credentials. He says far from being a tree-hugger, he raced motorcycles as a kid and was a member of the National Rifle Association.
Living in the heart of Silicon Valley, one of his first jobs was writing technical manuals for a little-known computer company called Apple.
"At that time it was a company of 50 people with Steve Jobs running around barefoot and it was a mile from my house.
"I remember sitting at Apple and thinking this is so boring," he says with a wry smile. "I thought I've got to go somewhere where there's something happening."
That ended up being a casino in Lake Tahoe, where he dealt blackjack at night and skied all day, until he tired of the decadent lifestyle and headed off to Berkeley and later Columbia to study fiction writing.
He worked as a journalist in New York writing about cops, AIDS and politics. And after working on a story for the New York Times Magazine about the American coal industry's rebirth under George W Bush, Goodell says he never looked back and has been writing in and around the topic ever since.
For Goodell, the Great Barrier Reef encapsulates the global problem.
"I came off Heron Island and had just had a dive in this amazing underwater world of sharks and manta rays and I visited the research centre which is looking at how coral reefs are adapting to increasing heat stress. We spent the day there and then we get in the boat and we go right by these giant coal transport stations. It was mind-boggling and heartbreaking simultaneously."

Economic impact
Goodell says his latest book has sold much better than expected for two reasons. The first is its release at the end of last year came against the backdrop of three of the most devastating and expensive hurricanes in the US – Harvey, Irma and Maria.
The second reason is that people have started to become more interested in the economic impact of climate change and sea level rises.
"It's really the economics that's driving the interest in my book. People are thinking about real estate values and rising insurance premiums."
"When I look at Miami Beach right now, or other places that are very vulnerable, I see a landscape of stranded assets. I think about the subprime mortgage crisis where you had a lot of risk in these mortgage loans that was not priced in the market. It's the same thing.
"What's going to happen is that risk will get priced in and that will be well before the water comes. The value of real estate on the water is going to go down. My goal is to make these risks transparent."
I suggest that because the water is rising gradually, and the size of the increase is up for debate, people are less clear how and when to respond. But Goodell is annoyed by this suggestion.
"We deal with uncertainty about risk all the time. We had 9/11 which was a devastating event and no one knows how big the risk is of another terrorist attack but we take actions to reduce those risks even in that uncertainty. It's the same thing here. It might be two feet by 2100. It might be two feet by 2030. If you look at the science, the risk is becoming greater. It's all in one direction. The book is called The Water Will Come because it's going to happen.
"Doing things like still building real estate right on the water, that's really dumb."
The main meal is being placed in front of us by a chirpy waitress and my fried chicken sandwich turns out to be a burger stacked high and surrounded by a mountain of fries.
"Wow. Good luck with that," is Goodell's advice as he tucks into his moderately sized plate of mushroom and spinach pasta.

Warming and rising
Goodell is not interested in converting climate deniers. He says his book is aimed at helping people who do understand the basic fundamentals to realise the urgency of the risk.
Up to now, Goodell has been very pragmatic, almost detached, in laying out the challenges associated with global warming and rising sea levels so I'm surprised when he becomes quite emotional talking about his recent trip to the reef with his daughter.
"How do you talk to a 15-year-old girl about the amazing place that she's seen and explain to her that by the time she's able to bring her kids there, it won't be there."
Goodell says he was conflicted about dwelling on the gravity of the situation because he didn't want to turn the trip into "some kind of a death watch". However, he says being aware of the potential environmental damage has enriched his own experiences.
"I pay attention to stuff. I look at the reef and it almost brings me to tears. Not what we're doing to it, even though that bothers me, but it's the beauty of it. I get to see that and show my daughter. I'm really grateful for that.
"We're really going to have to change the way we live with water," he says. "We're going to have to retreat from the coastlines and reinvent urban life in coastal cities and I think that can be really wonderful. But it's also going to be really messy and there's going to be a lot of economic loss.
"Risk is basically a function of money and elevation. If a city has both you're in good shape. If you have one or the other you're OK. If you have neither you're really in trouble."
Over coffee, Goodell says he has been accused by some climate sceptics of being hysterical to sell books.
"Are you kidding? If I was trying to sell books I would love to write this is all a hoax. I would sell gazillions of books. But the deeper you get into this you realise that not only is it not a hoax, the real truth is we don't know how bad it is."

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Recent Australian Droughts May Be The Worst In 800 Years

The Conversation -  |  |  |    

Places such as Berri were affected by Millennium Drought, caused by low cool-season rain. New materials and techniques are now being used to observe drought causes and water patterns in Australia’s history to help the future. Gary Sauer-Thompson/flickr, CC BY-NC
Australia is a continent defined by extremes, and recent decades have seen some extraordinary climate events. But droughts, floods, heatwaves, and fires have battered Australia for millennia. Are recent extreme events really worse than those in the past?
In a recent paper, we reconstructed 800 years of seasonal rainfall patterns across the Australian continent. Our new records show that parts of Northern Australia are wetter than ever before, and that major droughts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries in southern Australia are likely without precedent over the past 400 years.
This new knowledge gives us a clearer understanding of how droughts and flooding rains may be changing in the context of a rapidly warming world.

A history of drought
Australia has been shaped by floods, droughts, and blistering heat. How big and how intense these events were is poorly understood due to the limited historical and observational records.
Historical records provide rough estimates of the extent and intensity of droughts in parts of Australia since the late 1700s. For example, captains’ logbooks from ships anchored off of Sydney describe the Settlement Drought (1790-1793), which threatened the tenuous foothold of early European settlers in Australia. And farmers’ records describe the Goyder Line Drought (1861–1866) that occurred in areas north of the known arable lands of South Australia.
Observational weather records provide more detailed descriptions of climatic variability. However, systematic recording of weather in Australia only began in the late 19th century. Since then many parts of the continent have experienced prolonged wet periods and droughts. The most well known of these are the Federation drought (1895-1903), the World War II drought (1939-45), and the recent Millennium drought (1997-2009).
All three droughts were devastating to agriculture and the broader economy, but each was distinct in its spatial footprint, duration, and intensity. Importantly, these droughts also differed in seasonality.
Recent and historical droughts in Australia for the different natural resource management (NRM) regions. Provided by M.Freund
For example, the Millennium drought, which was most severe in southwestern and southeastern Australia, was caused by poor rainfall during the cool season. In contrast, the Federation drought, which affected almost the entire continent, was predominantly due to rainfall declines during the warm season.
Although the historical and observational records provide a wealth of information about the frequency of wet and dry extremes, they provide only part of the picture.
Lancelot that became a ghost town following the Federation Drought. denisben/flickr, CC BY-ND
Looking back
To understand possible trends in rainfall and assess the likelihood of prolonged droughts, we need to understand the long-term climatic context. For this, we need records that are much longer than existing observational and historical records.
Our new study used an extensive network of tree rings, ice cores, corals, and sediment records from across Australia and the adjacent Indian and Pacific Oceans to extend rainfall records across all of the major regions of Australia by between 400 and 800 years. Importantly, we did this for two seasons, the cool (April–September) season and warm (October–March) season, over eight large natural resource management regions spanning the Australian continent. This allows us to place recent observations of rainfall variability into a much longer context across the entire continent for the first time.


We found that recent shifts in rainfall variability are either unprecedented or very rare over the reconstructed period. The two most striking patterns were in tropical northern Australia, which as been unusually wet over the past century, and southern Australia, which has been unusually dry.
Our reconstructions also highlight differences between recent extreme drought events and those in earlier centuries. For example, the Millennium Drought was larger in area and longer than any other drought in southern Australia over the last 400 years.
Our reconstruction also shows that the most intense droughts described in the historical records – the Settlement Drought (1790-93), Sturt’s Drought (1809–30), and the Goyder Line Drought (1861–66) – were limited to specific regions. The Settlement Drought appears to have affected only Australia’s eastern regions, whereas the Goyder Line Drought, which occurred north of the northernmost limit of arable lands in Southern Australia, primarily impacted central Australia and the far north.
These historical droughts varied widely in the area they covered, highlighting at a continental scale the spatial diversity of drought. This spatial variability has also recently been demonstrated for eastern Australia.
Our multi-century rainfall reconstruction complements the recent Climate Change in Australia report on future climate. By providing a clearer window into climates of the past online, we can better see how extremes of rainfall may affect Australia in the future.

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Powerful Investors Push Big Companies To Plan For Climate Change

Scientific American - David S. Rauf

This spring, Wall Street seems more accepting of climate science as shareholders demand plans to reduce risks
Energy companies are being pushed by investors to change business models and account for climate science. Credit: Eric Kulin Getty Images
Fortune 500 corporations like Chevron and Kinder Morgan are facing renewed pressure from climate-focused activist investors. This year some of the most powerful shareholders, which include giant mutual funds, are supporting the push for businesses to respond to climate change. And the prodding has had more effect than ever before.
The coming weeks are dubbed “proxy season” by corporate governance experts. Most publicly traded companies hold annual meetings in which shareholders, via nonbinding resolutions, signal their approval or dislike of proposed company policies. This year initiatives on climate change are among the most popular ballot items: Of the more than 420 shareholder resolutions initially proposed, about 20 percent focused on climate, tied for the largest of any proposal category, according to a report by the group Proxy Impact. Some reolutions ask companies to adopt greenhouse gas emission targets whereas others ask for reports on ways businesses could be affected by the Paris climate agreement’s global temperature goals.
Already, several companies have bowed to investor demands before votes are held. Why? Several major asset managers—like BlackRock and Vanguard Group—are now putting their heft behind climate resolutions, says Aaron Ziulkowski, a manager at Boston-based Walden Asset Management who works on shareholder engagement initiatives. It is a signal, he says, that Wall Street’s skepticism of climate science has dwindled: “It’s now widely recognized that climate change is a legitimate risk.” Still, some observers caution corporate reports do not equal policy changes.
Shareholder proposals are part of the process at publicly traded companies where activist investors jockey annually to exert pressure on everything from board oversight to policies dealing with guns, cybersecurity and gender discrimination. For years investors at these  meetings have offered proposals based on climate change but lost when votes were tallied. Last year, however, momentum started to shift. Investors at Occidental Petroleum and ExxonMobil rebuked their respective corporate boards and voted to demand the companies produce reports on the business impacts of climate change. It marked the first time shareholders at major U.S. oil and gas producers backed such proposals, and corporate governance experts say the moves were game changers.
This year many companies are not waiting for ballot counts. So far about 20 climate-related resolutions have been withdrawn before a vote because agreements have been reached, according to a database compiled by Ceres, a nonprofit that tracks shareholder engagement and works with investors on sustainability issues. Nearly a dozen companies, Dominion Energy and Devon Energy among them, have agreed to produce reports on climate-related financial risks. Last year only one company, Xcel Energy, did anything like that. “The fact that there’s fewer proposals going to a vote and more agreements shows how serious the investor momentum is,” says Andrew Logan, director of oil and gas at Ceres.
Yet simple reports may not amount to much. Months after shareholders voted last year, Exxon released the asked-for document. Then some Exxon shareholders publicly criticized the oil and gas giant for concluding it faced no financial risk from the Paris accord. Others said the report was overly broad, relied on optimistic assumptions and failed to provide details on emissions.
But continued shareholder pressure can lead to actual changes in how a company does business, Logan says. He points to British-Dutch oil-and-gas giant Shell. In recent years growing investor alarm about climate change risks have led the company to sell off carbon-heavy oil sands assets. Last year shareholders voted—and the company agreed—to tie 10 percent of executive bonuses to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
In the U.S., Logan says, investors are  pushing for disclosures, for the most part, but that push still has an effect. The reports create competition within an industry, as companies vie with one another for investor dollars that go with the more aggressive climate-related plans. “Disclosure has real implications that these companies are going to have to follow through to actually mitigate risks,” Logan says. Investors at Chevron, for instance, are trying to get the company to address future changes to its portfolio, including expansion of renewable energy holdings. That proposal failed last year, but is up for a vote again at the end of May.
The follow-through may take longer than Logan envisions, however, says David Webber, a corporate governance expert and law professor at Boston University. It could take years and will require a sustained shareholder effort. “In the happiest version of the story companies will see the writing on the wall and take action on their own, but shareholders should be prepared to keep up the pressure,” he says. “These are long-term goals that may seem distant, and there’s no assurance they might be obtained. But people said that a few years ago about steps that have recently been accomplished with climate proposals. It’s important to take stock of the progress made so far.”

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