As our planet heats up, the politics is only getting stranger.
In
this world of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternate facts’, getting impartial
expert information on major global issues like climate change, has never
been so important.
This is a view senior University of Wollongong lecturer in Science and Technology Studies, Dr Adam Lucus totally agrees with.
And he believes the NSW Government has “dropped the ball” on climate change.
“Recent April records have been higher than average and even recorded it’s hottest day ever,” he said.
Dr Lucus
is an expert in the field of climate change and also a former policy
analyst for the NSW Government. He worked primarily with former NSW
Premier, Bob Carr.
Dr Lucus isn’t happy with the environmental stance of the current state government.
“The NSW Government has been dragging its’ heels on the renewable energy target,” he said.
“If
roughly 35 percent of Australia’s emissions are coming from the energy
sector and another 15 percent from transport then clearly those two
areas are what the government should be focusing on.”
But
he believes that hasn’t been the case, adding that ‘eight of the
10 hottest years on record in Australia have occurred within the past
two decades.”
His research on energy
policy responses to anthropogenic climate change led him to state
– “the abandonment of the carbon tax has led to increased emissions in
the electricity sector and now we are going through this ridiculous
argument about whether we should be keeping coal fired power stations
open when the owners want to shut them down and can see the economic
benefit of renewables and storage.”
The
climate change advocate has chaired the non-partisan, volunteer-led
climate change solutions education and research organisation, Beyond
Zero Emissions.
However, Dr Lucas
noted just how hard achieving zero emissions is, highlight that
the Kyoto reporting period in 2012 “saw a significant increase in
emissions at 55 percent for electricity and 45 percent for transport.”
He
said the state government’s priorities were out of sync. “There are so
many things they could be focusing on which would drive emissions down
such as agriculture production, issues around manufacturing, energy,
reliance on gas, waste recycling and waste processing.”
Dr
Lucus’s current research is focused on drivers for, and obstacles to,
the complete decarbonation of the world's energy sector.
2017 was the 41st consecutive year with an above-average global temperature.
A
freeway in Los Angeles. “This is about health, it’s about life and
death,” Gov. Jerry Brown of California said of the state’s lawsuit. Credit Raymond Boyd/Getty Images
A
coalition led by California sued the Trump administration over car
emissions rules on Tuesday, escalating a revolt against a proposed
rollback of fuel economy standards that threatens to split the country’s
auto market.
In a lawsuit filed in
the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia,
California and its coalition — 16 other states and the District of
Columbia — called the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to weaken
auto emissions rules unlawful and accused the agency of failing to
follow its own regulations, and of violating the Clean Air Act.
“States
representing 140 million Americans are getting together to sue Outlaw
Pruitt — not Administrator Pruitt, but Outlaw Pruitt,” Gov. Jerry Brown
of California said at a news conference, referring to Scott Pruitt, the
head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
“This is about health, it’s about life and death,” Governor Brown said. “I’m going to fight it with everything I can.”
Tuesday’s
lawsuit represents an important step in a brewing battle between the
state and the Trump administration over climate change regulations. That
battle could break into war in the coming weeks if the E.P.A. moves to
substantially weaken the nation’s current greenhouse gas rules for
tailpipe emissions or challenges a legal waiver that allows California
to set its own greenhouse gas emissions regulations.
It
is not yet clear if the E.P.A. will take those steps, but Tuesday’s
lawsuit could strengthen California’s legal hand if that were to happen.
“This
is a preliminary challenge. It’s a shot across the bow,” said Jody
Freeman, a professor of environmental law at Harvard University who
advised the Obama administration.“It sets the table to challenge the agency’s reasons for rolling back the rule, if they go ahead and do it.”
California
has long been authorized under the 1970 Clean Air Act to write its own
stricter air pollution rules, and a dozen other states have
traditionally followed those standards, which are designed to curb
earth-warming emissions from cars and light trucks.
In
2012, when the Obama administration set a comprehensive set of
standards on greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy for cars and
light trucks — aiming to roughly double the average fuel economy of new
cars, S.U.V.s and light trucks by 2025 — California agreed to harmonize
its regulations with the new federal standards.
But
last spring, executives from the Big Three automakers went to the White
House to ask for more lenient emissions rules, kicking off an effort by
the administration to roll back those standards.
Last
month, the Trump administration moved forward legally with a plan to
reopen the Obama administration’s standards, saying they were too
stringent. The E.P.A. has not yet put forth a proposed set of new
standards to replace the Obama rules, but it has drafted a new set of regulations that would drastically weaken the Obama-era rules after 2020.
Tuesday’s
suit contends that the Trump administration’s justification for
revisiting the Obama rules was shoddy and lacked a strong scientific
rationale. However, even if California and the other states win the
case, it would not prevent the Trump administration from taking the next
step and revoking California’s right to tougher clean air standards.
California
had said it would stick with the tougher regulations and threatened to
sue should Washington try to challenge its authority to follow its own
air pollution rules.
“This is
California saying: You really want war? We’ll give you war,” said Dan
Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, an advocate for stronger
emissions rules. “It’s a signal to the administration that they’re not
going to get away with anything in this space.”
A
legal battle with California brings the nation’s auto industry closer
to a split into two markets as its legal challenge plays out in court:
one that continues to follow stricter rules requiring cars to be more
efficient and less polluting than the other.
The
18 jurisdictions joining in Tuesday’s lawsuit represent more than 40
percent of the United States auto market, California said. According to
its news release, they are: California, Connecticut, Delaware, District
of Columbia, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota,
New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont,
Virginia and Washington.
Automakers
are scrambling to avoid that outcome, urging continued talks for a
unified national program. They have asked for a direct meeting with
President Trump to try to avert an all-out weakening of regulations that
they fear will now go well beyond what they themselves initially
sought, according to two people with knowledge of the automakers’ plans.
Separately,
Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Environment and
Public Works Committee, sent a letter to the secretary of the
Department of Transportation, Elaine Chao, and Mr. Pruitt asking that
they abandon the rollback.
“Such a
proposal, if finalized, would harm U.S. national and economic security,
undermine efforts to combat global warming pollution, create regulatory
and manufacturing uncertainty for the automobile industry and
unnecessary litigation, increase the amount of gasoline consumers would
have to buy, and runs counter to statements that both of you have made,”
Senator Carper wrote. “I urge you to immediately disavow this
proposal.”
*Hiroko
Tabuchi is a climate reporter. She joined The Times in 2008, and was
part of the team awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory
Reporting. *Coral
Davenport covers energy and environmental policy, with a focus on
climate change, from the Washington bureau. She joined The Times in 2013
and previously worked at Congressional Quarterly. Links
