Lethal Heating: 10/14/18

14/10/2018

While My Island Nation Sinks, Australia Is Doing Nothing To Solve Climate Change

The Guardian - Anote Tong*

The inaction and recalcitrance of Australia’s federal politicians is making Kiribati despair

Part of the village of Eita in the nation of Kiribati, which is only two metres above sea level and is already feeling the impact of rising sea levels. Photograph: Jonas Gratzer/LightRocket via Getty Images

A new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change paints a picture of what the world will look like if it gets 1.5°C, and 2°C, hotter than pre-industrial levels.
Half a degree of warming may seem trifling but, for my country, Kiribati, these fractional figures are a matter of life and death.
Our whole nation is only two metres above sea level, and the report shows that the difference between 1.5°C and 2°C of warming is several centimetres of sea level rise. Given that we are already feeling the impacts of rising water, every millimetre counts.
Increasingly frequent king tides and storm surges, floods and longer droughts are new, unwelcome additions to our way of life on Kiribati.
Sea level rise is turning our freshwater resources salty, rendering the land unable to grow staple crops such as coconut and taro, and eating away our shoreline.
We are being told that we may have to abandon our islands, the places where our ancestors have been buried, where our children have a home and an identity.
If this disastrous outcome comes to pass, my people will need a place of safety to move to. Rather than be regarded as “climate refugees” – a term that has no definition or status in the international legal system – I seek migration with dignity for my people.
As we reflect on the frightening future ahead of us, there is no escaping the deep injustice of the fact that, despite our negligible contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, we are on the frontline of climate change consequences.
Making matters worse is the fact that instead of heeding the IPCC’s recommendation for urgent and deep emissions cuts to make sure we don’t exceed 1.5°C of warming, industrialised nations such as Australia are doing virtually nothing to solve the problem.

We are being told that we may have to abandon our islands, the places where our ancestors have been buried, where our children have a home.

It’s bad enough that the United States, one of the world’s largest polluters, has pulled out of the Paris agreement. Now, there are rumblings that Australian politicians want to do the same.
Already, Australia has one of the highest per capita emissions in the world, and its national greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. The country is twiddling its thumbs as the window of opportunity to keep the people of the Pacific – and Australia – safe slams shut.
Historically, many in the Pacific have regarded Australia as a big brother to our region, and looked to the country for leadership.
The inspiring advocacy of ordinary Australians, businesses, unions, city governments, state governments, churches and NGOs gives us hope that Kiribati could have a fighting chance at survival.
But the inaction and recalcitrance of federal politicians makes us despair.
As we witness their indifference to the reality of climate change, this longstanding friendly relationship is giving way to disillusionment and disappointment. We believe Australia is failing in its duty as a regional leader.
The implications of this for Australia’s foreign policy are immense, as the inroads made by Chinese diplomacy have shown.
Australia must play a more constructive role. Ceasing to approve new coalmines would be a good place to start. It must also adopt obvious solutions such as renewable energy, which will help bring its emissions down to zero.
It’s not just us that stands to gain from this. In Australia, supporting these solutions will also create new, green jobs, and unlock billions of dollars in economic opportunities.
And your own country, which has been ravaged by bushfires and droughts over the past few months, will also be safer from climate change impacts.
Ultimately, as I head to Australia later this month for a series of public lectures and meetings, I hope to leave the Australian people and politicians with one simple message. The future of Kiribati, Australia and the region is in your hands. It’s time to act.

*Anote Tong is the former president of Kiribati

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Australia's Climate Idiocracy Must End – And There's No Time To Waste

The Guardian - Greg Jericho

The Liberal party’s biggest con was the idea that reducing emissions could be done without pain and at little cost

Michael McCormack, Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg, who bragged that ‘emissions on a per capita and GDP basis have come down to their lowest level in 28 years’. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

This week came the news from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that we are screwed. I wish I could be more optimistic. I wish I could hold out some hope that things are about to improve. But I look at actions by governments around the world, and the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments, and I find the ability to retain a positive outlook smothered in the face of feckless indifference and wilful ignorance.
The IPCC report is not actually, as some would have you think, a prophecy of doom – it is a call for action. Rather than talking of what will happen if the planet warms by 2C above industrial levels, its focus is on how much lower the risks are if we limit it to 1.5C.
And the good news is this can actually be done.
The bad news is we need to do it by 2030 and it is going to cost, on average, about US$2.4tn every year until 2035 – equivalent to 2.5% of the world GDP.
For Australia, that translates to around $46bn – the same amount the government spends on the aged pension. Even if we argue that as we only contribute about 1% of total global emissions we should only contribute 1% of the US$2.4tn cost, we are chipping in $33bn a year in Australian dollars – or equivalent to the combined amount spent this year on the NDIS, Newstart and the childcare subsidy.

Not cheap.
But keeping temperatures at 1.5C reduces the risk of, for example, all of the Great Barrier Reef dying (we’re still likely to lose 70% to 90%). Our farmers would certainly notice the difference as the reports suggests that biome shifts in Australia (which would see our arid, temperate and tropical regions shift) “would be avoided by constraining warming to 1.5C as compared with 2C”.
In a pure dollars sense, the report notes that “the economic damage in the United States from climate change” is around 1.2% of GDP per 1C increase.
So it is pretty clear that limiting the temperature rise to 1.5C is worth it. The problem is it is harder to achieve. It requires, for example, reducing emissions to zero by 2050 rather than 2075.
And that is tough to do, especially when you have governments like our own that are already fudging their ability to reduce emissions by much lower amounts than what would be required.
As we saw earlier this month, the government tried its best to hide the latest greenhouse gas emissions data and, since then, has done nothing but try to con voters that all is well.
On Monday, the environment minister, Melissa Price, in an excruciating interview on the ABC’s AM program, refused to say she thought the IPCC report was reliable and boasted that “emissions per capita were at their lowest level in 28 years”.
This was repeated by the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, who took it further by bragging that “what we’ve done on climate is seen that emissions on a per capita and GDP basis have come down to their lowest level in 28 years. That’s the record.”

The reality of the IPCC report is that we can limit the damage from climate change but it is going to be hard and it is going to be expensive.

What an idiotic thing to brag about.
Every government every year since 1990 has been able to say that emissions per GDP are at their lowest level – they haven’t gone up once! Bragging about having reduced emissions per GDP is like boasting that today you are the oldest you have ever been.
Reducing emissions per capita (or per GDP) has never been the issue. The only reason people look at that figure (as I did a few years back) is to compare it across nations to contrast greenhouse gas dependency and efficiency.
In 2016, Australia had the fifth-highest total emissions in the OECD – behind the US, Japan, Germany and Canada. But, on a per capita basis, guess what? We’re No 1.
So if Frydenberg, Price and the prime minister want to talk about emissions per capita, talk about that. Or maybe they can brag about the fact that in 2014 our emissions per capita were 5.5% higher than that of the US but in 2016 they were 12.6% higher.
The problem is our government, like the Trump White House and Republican party in the US, consists of two types of people – climate change deniers who are so ignorant they truly do think it is all a UN hoax and those who are willing to enable the deniers for political gain.
A choice between the ignorant and the feckless.
And it really doesn’t matter which category the prime minster, treasurer or environment minister are in, the end result is the same – climate change policy cons that will not deliver what they say they will.
Take the prime minister’s line that we will reach our Paris targets “in a canter”. How, pray tell, will we do this? Well, he told ABC’s Sabra Lane that “this is the advice that we’re working through as a government. But what it’s based on also is we’ve crossed a threshold point, Sabra. No longer in order to see large investment in renewable technologies do you need these heavy subsidies, because it’s now making economic sense all on its own.”
In other words, he would have us believe that nothing more needs to be done, it will all happen because of market forces. Even more laughably, Morrison suggested that we would meet our commitments because “we’ve still got the small-scale RET and the large-scale RET programs, they remain in place”.
Yes they remain in place but, as the minister for energy, Angus Taylor, recently told parliament, “the truth of the matter is that the renewable energy target is going to wind down from 2020. The target reaches a peak in 2020 and we will not be replacing that with anything.”
So Morrison’s two major programs that he believes will help us reach our emissions reduction target by 2030 will end in 2020.
But, you know, trust him! Morrison “believes” that “we’re going to meet those targets comfortably”. Faith can move mountains and now apparently also reduce emissions.
The reality of the IPCC report is that we can limit the damage from climate change but it is going to be hard and it is going to be expensive.
That has always been the biggest con from the Liberal party since Tony Abbott took over – the suggestion that reducing emissions can be done without any pain and little cost.
If that were the case, no one would be worrying about it – it would have already have been done. But the con artist always tries to sell the line that the difficult can be done with ease – just trust him, you can get something for nothing. And all the while something nags you, because you think it sounds too good to be true – and it is.
The IPCC report makes clear that this government’s con job on climate change must stop, and that not only is the time running out to do something about emissions but that the time to put up with climate-change deniers and their enablers in governments around the world is over.

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'Jaw Dropping': New Zealand Offers Lessons In Tackling Climate Change

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Scott Simpson, New Zealand's National Party environment spokesman, stunned a trans-Tasman investment meeting last week by stating that climate action was "too important to be playing politics with".
Or rather, it was the Australian delegates who were shocked, so used are they to the toxic debates in Canberra.
"It made my jaw drop, that's for sure," said Emma Herd, chief executive of the Investor Group on Climate Change.

Agriculture accounts for half of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions - and will be the central to that country's climate action. Credit: Grant Matthew

Also well-received was Mr Simpson's comment that it was vital "for all of us and our grandchildren that we have a [climate action] framework that is enduring", coming as it did soon after the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had issued its latest report warning about the perils of even another half degree of warming.
That Mr Simpson hails from the centre-right opposition party roughly equivalent to our Liberal-National coalition only underscored the contrast between the nations.
New Zealand's major parties, busy trying to thrash out a Zero Carbon Bill by year's end, are dismayed by the absence of similar bipartisanship across the Tasman, James Shaw, climate change minister in the Labor-led government told Fairfax Media.
“We do tend to look at what’s going on in Australia politics, in particular in relation to climate policies, and we think, 'We cannot afford to let this happen in New Zealand'," Mr Shaw said. "It seems like a pretty strong lesson in what not to do.”
Despite ditching its main climate and energy policy – the National Energy Guarantee aimed at reducing carbon emissions from the power sector while bolstering the grid and easing prices – the Morrison government insists it can achieve Australia's Paris climate commitments.
"The government will meet its 2030 target through our scalable policies, and will do so without compromising the economy," Melissa Price, the environment minister, said. The goal of reducing 2005-level emissions by 26-28 per cent by 2030 "is responsible, achievable and comparable to other developed countries"

'Whole world must act'
Even if total emissions were the issue, Kiwis would have more excuse than Australians for doing nothing. Their share of global greenhouse gases is less than 0.2 per cent, or about a eighth of Australia's.

James Shaw, New Zealand's climate change minister, says even small nations much do their part. Credit: Ross Giblin

Still, on a per-capita basis, both nations have among the highest emissions in the world, Mr Shaw said.
Tally up the 90-odd nations contributing less than 1 per cent of emissions and you reach almost a third of the global total – larger than China or the US, he says.
“An issue like this is something the whole world has to grapple with," Todd Muller, Mr Shaw's counterpart from the National Party, says.
In government, the National Party signed up to the Paris climate accord and introduced an emissions trading scheme.
To remove the politics from the negotiations, all sides agreed to take advice on New Zealand's targets from an independent climate commission. (Australia has a Climate Change Authority but all the original board members have been replaced since it was set up by the Gillard government and its role as an advocate for action has largely disappeared.)
“If you have essentially your best and your brightest informed by science ... it’s an easier place to have a conversation with your community than just playing partisan politics with them,” Mr Muller said.

Todd Muller, the National Party's climate spokesman says all nations must act to tackle global warming. Credit: Grant Matthew

Mr Shaw said the Opposition could have exploited a potentially divisive policy – agriculture contributes half of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions – but didn't.
"They are playing an absolute straight bat," he said. "There’s a genuine best effort to get a consensus outcome.”
New Zealanders, like Australians, have endured an increasing spate of extreme weather events, which the government attributes in part to climate change. These include a record hot year in 2016, droughts and a major forest fire last year.
"We've definitely had a lot more extreme rainfall events," Nava Fedaeff, a climate scientist with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), said. These include damaging ex-tropical cyclones hitting the nation, with the average jumping from less than one a year to three over the last summer season.
Farmers, who have in the past objected fiercely to taxes on methane, appear more ready to accept the need to act. DairyNZ, for instance, has welcomed the prospect of emissions targets enshrined in legislation to give the sector "much needed certainty".
Trish Rankin, a dairy farmer managing 440 cows for a Maori-owned co-operative near Hawera in the Taranaki region of the North Island, said climate action "needs to be apolitical – it needs to be able to last over time".
Ms Rankin said New Zealand farmers realise their social licence depends on them being good custodians of the land, and the principle extends to curbing emissions. Open consultations with experts have also helped.
"If you know they are listening to you, you're more likely to listen to them," she said.

Whether NZ stands for New Zealand and Net Zero emissions will hinge largely on what happens in its agriculture sector. Credit: AP

Convergence ahead?
Bill Hare, director of Climate Analytics, notes New Zealand's existing climate policies are insufficient, but the nation appears to be "moving to a much better space".
Steps already taken include the ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration, and in prospect are five-year interim emissions targets and a more ambitious emissions trading scheme.
Mr Hare is optimistic that because Australian levels of public support for climate action including renewable energy are not so dissimilar to New Zealand's, policies will eventually converge.
"Farming wants to see some serious action", he says, while recent reports suggest the power sector isn't going to wait for the government to move on emissions cuts either.
New Zealand's climate minister, Mr Shaw, says farmers – unlike Australian coal companies – have options.
“People are still going to want to eat in 30 years' time, so the question is what do you produce and how do you produce it – not whether or not you’re going to produce food," he said.
"But in 30 years' time, you can pretty much guarantee no one in the world is going to use coal for anything.”

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