Lethal Heating: 10/20/18

20/10/2018

‘Not Happy’: Australia Must Act On Climate, Says Former Kiribati Leader

The Guardian - Kate Lyons

Anote Tong, allegedly insulted by Australian minister, says inaction means Canberra risks losing its status in Pacific region

Former Kiribati president Anote Tong is advocating for robust action on climate change. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Anote Tong has had quite a week. The former president of Kiribati has been in Australia to advocate for more robust action on climate change, which threatens to wipe out his Pacific home within a matter of decades as sea levels rise.
But on Wednesday he got caught up in controversy when reports emerged that Australia’s environment minister, Melissa Price, allegedly told him it was “always about the cash” when Pacific Islands leaders came to Australia.

It’s about lives, it’s about the future
Anote Tong

As a result, Tong has become hot property. When we meet in the late afternoon the next day he has been on the go since 4am with interviews and meetings.
While Price’s alleged comments have given him prominence, they have also threatened to derail his message about the impact of climate change on Kiribati and what countries such as Australia should be doing to help.
Tong says he did not hear the comments Price is alleged to have made at a restaurant. “I do have a hearing problem. I’m a free diver and I lost my hearing [in one ear],” he says. “If it was true that those were the comments then I would not be happy.”

Mostly, Tong just wants to move on. “We’ve gone beyond that, I don’t want to go back. I’ve had a call from the minister, which I thought was very gracious of her to do that, just saying if I have offended you in any way I assure you it was not my intention.”
Tong has other criticism for the environment minister and her colleagues. He was angered by their reactions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report last week, which said the world had just 12 years to limit global warming to a maximum of 1.5C. Price said it would be “irresponsible” for Australia to commit to phase out coal by 2050, while the deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, said Australia would not change policy based on the recommendations of “some sort of report”.
“I was not happy. I was very disappointed when the credibility of the report was being questioned, because there is no alternative science being put forward and what’s at stake is not minor,” said Tong. “It’s not about the marginal rise in price or reduction in price of energy, it’s about lives, it’s about the future.”
If Australia, which has been criticised by its Pacific neighbours for failing to take more concerted action to reduce emissions, does not change its tone, Tong says it is in danger not only of losing its position as a regional leader but of being welcome in regional organisations at all.
“When countries in the region do things that are not proper, like have a coup, we expel them from the regional body … When you believe somebody is destroying your future and your home, what should you do?”
For Kiribati, the impacts of climate change are being felt acutely, with increased storms and flooding. Rising sea levels mean it is inevitable the island will disappear, says Tong. “If it doesn’t happen in 20 years’ time, it’ll happen in 50 years’ time or in 100 years’ time.”
When people have to leave Kiribati, Tong does not want them to leave in an emergency situation or as climate change refugees – a term he dislikes. Instead, he says, governments should be training people in countries such as Kiribati that are feeling the brunt of climate change so they can get jobs elsewhere, which Tong calls “migration with dignity”.
“We have more than enough time to make our people qualified,” he said. “It has already worked. We had a Kiribati-Australia nursing initiative, where our young people were trained in Queensland and they found jobs in Australia.”
By one estimate from an Oxfam report last year, the sea-level rise resulting from 2C of warming could submerge land that is currently home to 280 million people. Each year from 2008 and 2016 an average of 21.8 million people were reported as newly internally displaced by extreme weather disasters such as cyclones.
Tong says Kiribati and other countries like it are “owed” the resources to train their people so they can relocate. “If I drop a tree on your home and I come to you and say ‘where are you going to live?’ [you’re] going to say: ‘I’m going to live with you until my home is fixed.’ That’s the normal thing, isn’t it? Otherwise I think I take you to court. Now we don’t have that remedy, but I think the principles are essentially the same.”

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After Nobel In Economics, William Nordhaus Talks About Who’s Getting His Pollution-Tax Ideas Right

New York Times - Coral Davenport

A few governments — notably, parts of Canada and South Korea — have adapted his ideas in ways that frame them as a financial windfall for taxpayers.

“Things change over the long run,” said William D. Nordhaus. “What is toxic or opposed in one generation gradually becomes accepted in the next.” Credit Monica Jorge for The New York Times

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — William D. Nordhaus, the Yale economist who shared the Nobel in economic science this week, has pointed words for some of the experiments so far with his theories on taxing polluters to fight climate change.
“It was a catastrophic failure in the European Union,” he said just days after not only being awarded the Nobel, but also seeing his life’s work embraced in a landmark United Nations assessment of the global threat of climate change. That document, approved by more than 180 nations, described Professor Nordhaus’s ideas as essential for slowing the carbon dioxide emissions that are rapidly warming the atmosphere.
But in other places around the world — notably, parts of Canada and South Korea — politicians have adapted the idea in ways that not only show signs of working, but that also reframe it not as a tax, but as a financial windfall for taxpayers. Other governments, including China and some individual states in the United States, are also testing different ways to force companies to pay to pollute.
In short, the world is becoming a laboratory for theories that Professor Nordhaus developed decades ago, when global warming was an abstract future threat. By contrast, this week’s United Nations report amounts to a stark warning of immediate risk.
The report, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said that if greenhouse gas emissions continued unabated, the atmosphere would warm up to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, by 2040, leading to irrevocable damage including severe food shortages, coastal inundations and the displacement of tens of millions of people as soon as 2040. If the planet keeps warming to 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the effects could include devastating floods and droughts and the permanent loss of the world’s coral reefs.
The Nobel, which Professor Nordhaus shared with the New York University economist Paul M. Romer, was widely perceived as a rebuke to President Trump, who has called climate change a hoax and sought to roll back the United States’ existing climate change policies. It is also seen as a broader challenge to powerful Republican political voices in the United States, among them the libertarian billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch and the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, who have attacked lawmakers who support a carbon tax, making it among the most volatile ideas in American politics.
On Wednesday, Professor Nordhaus discussed his carbon pricing theories and the political landscape. The exchanges have been edited and trimmed.

Why is carbon pricing seen as political poison in the United States?
It’s been caught up in the politics, and it just happens that this particular policy is one that has faced the wrath of a whole group of thinkers. Grover Norquist, energy companies, it’s the Koch brothers and their foundations, it’s people using fair tactics and foul tactics — it’s been caught up as one of the issues in the Great Divide.
This anti-tax movement has been so powerful and so harmful in the United States. There have been a large number of conservative economists in the United States who have endorsed the idea of a carbon tax.

Where has carbon pricing been successful? Where has it failed?
We learned with the European Union that once you go beyond the simple, idealized version of carbon prices and into implementation, it’s a very different thing. One of the things we found out: One of the problems with cap and trade [a system in which governments place a cap on countries’ carbon-dioxide pollution and companies then pay for, and trade, credits that permit them to pollute] is that it is dependent on predicting what future emissions will be. But if those projections are wrong, the system fails.
With the E.U., their projected carbon emissions were high, but the actual carbon emissions were low, and the carbon price fell drastically, from $30 to $40 per ton down to single digits. So the price was so low it did not have an effect in lowering emissions. It was flawed design. If the models had predicted too few emissions, and the price had gone to $1,000 per ton. we would have had a different problem.
The carbon tax has different problems, but not this one. The price of carbon is independent of the amount of emissions.
When I talk to people about how to design a carbon price, I think the model is British Columbia. You raise electricity prices by $100 a year, but then the government gives back a dividend that lowers internet prices by $100 year. In real terms, you’re raising the price of carbon goods but lowering the prices of non-carbon-intensive goods.
That’s the model of how something like this might work. It would have the right economic effects but politically not be so toxic. The one in British Columbia is not only well designed but has been politically successful.

What went wrong when President Obama tried to implement a carbon price in 2009?
I did not talk to Obama about this directly, but I spoke with many of his advisers over the years.
One of my very, very few disappointments in Obama when he was president is that he did not come out in favor of carbon tax. I’m sure he did the political calculus on this. He should have come out and talked not just about climate change and its dangers but how to use a carbon tax to fix it. He was a great speaker a great educator but this is one where he let us down, I think.

Professor Nordhaus said the problem of carbon taxes was political, rather than one of economics or feasibility. Credit Monica Jorge for The New York Times

How do you think a carbon tax could get bipartisan support?
Things change over the long run. What is toxic or opposed in one generation gradually becomes accepted in the next. Social security took a long time. It was opposed for many, many decades but since Reagan is has been widely accepted.
On carbon taxes, people’s views have changed from being very hostile, to conservative economists embracing this, to the I.P.C.C. saying, this is the approach.
I have to be hopeful that, if we continue to work on this, the public will get there on the science, and make an exception to the toxicity of taxes. It will help if it’s tied to something popular — if, as a result of the revenue from a carbon tax, you get a check in the mail, or it funds health care.
In terms of implementation, it’s not much more difficult to implement than a gasoline tax. Gasoline taxes are very easy to implement.

But gasoline taxes are also politically toxic.
Only in this country! In other countries, people are grown-up, and they can live with taxes.
The problem is political, rather than one of economics or feasibility. It’s because it’s used as a weapon. At some point, I’m hopeful that grown-ups will take over and we will do what is necessary. I hope so. If we don’t, then things will just get worse and worse.

Do we have enough time to avoid the warming that will bring severe and damaging effects of climate change?
It’s not going to happen in time for 1.5 degrees. It’s very unlikely to happen for 2 degrees. We’d have to be very pessimistic about the economy or optimistic about technology for 2 degrees. If we start moving very swiftly in the next 20 years, we might able to avoid 2 degrees, but if we don’t do that, we’re in for to changes in the Earth’s system that we can’t begin to understand in depth. Warming of 4, 5, 6 degrees will bring changes we don’t understand because it’s outside the range of human experience in the last 100,000 to 200,000 years.
We’ve been going backward for the last two years. Maybe we can stop going backward and start going forward.

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Here’s 123 Things Our Leaders Did To ‘Confront’ Climate Change

New Matilda - Liam McLoughlin

A recent ReachTel poll commissioned by Greenpeace Australia found that for the voters of Wentworth – former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s old seat – tackling climate change was their number one priority. Here's a list of Liberal Party decisions on climate change over the last five years.

Tony Abbott eats an onion. Just because.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott

Abolishes key ministerial positions of climate change and science – 16 September 2013
Abolishes the Climate Commission – 19 September 2013
Denies there is a link between climate change and more severe bush fires and accuses a senior UN official of “talking through their hat” – 23 October 2013
Abolishes the Antarctic Animal Ethics Committee which ensured research on animals in the Antarctic complies with Australian standards – 8 November 2013
Cuts 600 jobs at the CSIRO – 8 November 2013
Abandons Australia’s emission reduction targets – 12 November, 2013
Downgrades national environment laws by giving approval powers to state premiers – 9 December 2013
Removes the community’s right to challenge decisions where the government has ignored expert advice on threatened species impacts – 9 December 2013
Approves the largest coal port in the world in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area – 10 December 2013
Approves Clive Palmer’s mega coal mine in the Galilee Basin which opponents say will severely damage Great Barrier Reef – 11 December 2013
Overturns the “critically endangered” listing of the Murray Darling Basin – 11 December 2013
Scraps the COAG Standing Council on Environment and Water – 13 December 2013
Starts dismantling Australia’s world leading marine protection system – 13 December 2013
Axes funding for animal welfare – 17 December 2013
Defunds the Environmental Defenders Office which is a network of community legal centres providing free advice on environmental law – 17 December 2013
Scraps the Home Energy Saver Scheme which helps struggling low income households cut their electricity bills – 17 December 2013
Cuts funding to the Energy Efficiency Opportunities Programme which makes it mandatory for large energy-using-businesses to improve their efficiency –17 December, 2013
Requests the delisting of World Heritage status for Tasmanian forests – 21 December 2013
Breaks his promise to provide a customs vessel to monitor whaling operations in the Southern Ocean – 23 December 2013
Defunds all international environmental programs, the International Labour Organisation and cuts funding to a range of international aid programs run by NGOs such as Save the Children, Oxfam, CARE Australia and Caritas – 18 January 2014
Exempts Western Australia from national environment laws to facilitate shark culling – 21 January 2014
Appoints a climate change skeptic to head a review of our renewable energy target – 17 February 2014
Blames carbon pricing for the closure of Alcoa smelters and rolling mills and the loss of nearly 1,000 jobs, despite the fact the company states it had no bearing on their decision – 19 February 2014
Axes funding earmarked to save the Sumatran rhinoceros from extinction – 28 February 2014
Cuts hundreds of jobs at the CSIRO – 14 March 2014
Cuts 480 jobs from the Environment Department which help protect places such as Kakadu, Antarctica and the Great Barrier Reef – 7 April 2014
Scraps the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) which was set up to support new and emerging renewable technologies and in doing so breaks an election promise – 13 May 2014
Axes industry and community clean energy programs including the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, the National Low Emission Coal Initiative, Energy Efficiency Programmes, the National Solar Schools Plan, Energy Efficiency Information Grants and Low Carbon Communities – 13 May 2014
Cuts Australia’s Animal Welfare Strategy – 13 May 2014
Rips a further $111.4 million over four years out of the operating budget of the CSIRO – 13 May 2014
Reduces funding to the Australian Institute for Marine Science – 13 May 2014
Breaks a promise to have one million more solar roofs across Australia and at least 25 solar towns – 13 May 2014
Breaks a promise to spend $2.55 billion on the Emissions Reduction Fund by committing less than half this amount in the budget – 13 May 2014
Terminates the Office of Water Science research programme – 13 May, 2014
Slashes the Biodiversity Fund – 13 May, 2014
Scraps the National Water Commission – 13 May, 2014
Axes the carbon tax with no viable policy to address climate change or Australia’s emission targets – 17 July, 2014
Repeals the mining tax on the profits of big coal and iron ore companies – 2 September 2014
Cuts spending on science and innovation to the lowest levels since the data was first published – 07 October, 2014
Describes coal as “good for humanity” while opening a coal mine in Queensland – 13 October, 2014
Refuses to contribute to the fund Green Climate Fund, which Abbott described the year before as “socialism masquerading as environmentalism” – 17 November, 2014
Cuts CSIRO funding, which means that CSIRO will lose 1/5 of its workforce – 24 November, 2014
Cuts the Climate Adaptation Outlook Independent Expert Group – 15 December 2014
Cuts the Biological Diversity Advisory Committee – 15 December 2014
Abolishes the Subcommittee on Animal Health Laboratory Standards – 15 December 2014
Abolishes the Antarctic Science Advisory Committee – 15 December 2014
Abolishes the Emissions Intensive–-Trade Exposed Expert Advisory Committee –15 December 2014
Disbands the Commonwealth Environmental Water Stakeholder Reference Panel – 15 December 2014
Abolishes the COAG Standing Council on Environment and Water – 15 December 2014
Abolishes the Bureau of Meteorology Water Accounting Standards Board – 15 December 2014
Abolishes the National Marine Mammal Scientific Committee – 15 December 2014
Disbands the National Marine Mammal Advisory Committee – 15 December 2014
Abolishes the National Landscapes Reference Committee – 15 December 2014
Abolishes the Technical Advisory Committee for the Coal Mining Abatement Technology Support Package – 15 December 2014
Abolishes the Marine Council – 15 December 2014
Appoints a climate skeptic who praised Rupert Murdoch as the “starting point for green innovation” to the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment – 21 December 2014
Cuts $12.5 million from the National Heritage Trust – 12 May 2015
Establishes a Commissioner for Wind Farms – 24 June 2015
Slashes the renewable energy target – 24 June 2015
Intense lobbying keeps Great Barrier Reef off UNESCO’s world heritage in-danger list despite many government decisions which threaten it – 2 July 2015
Directs the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to stop investing in wind power – 12 July 2015
Bans the Clean Energy Finance Corporation from investing in roof top solar panels and other small scale solar energy – 12 July 2015
Reduces Australia’s carbon emissions reduction target – 11 August 2015
Tries to introduce laws to stop citizens exercising their legal rights to stop big developments that damage the environment – 19 August 2015

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. (IMAGE: Veni, Flickr).

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull

Approves Carmichael coal mine – 16 October 2015
Environment Minister Greg Hunt claims selling India Australian coal will cut carbon emissions – 10 Dec 2015
Approves Abbot Point Coal Terminal expansion – 22 December 2015
Presides over a drop in Australia’s ranking on the Environmental Performance Index of 10 places – 28 January 2016
Approves logging in Murray Valley National Park – 28 February 2016
Tries to loan Adani $1 billion to build a railway link to the Carmichael mine and promises to “fix” native title problems – 11 April 2017
Describes Labor’s emissions trading scheme as “jobs destroying”, a handbrake on the economy, leading to “much higher energy prices.” – 27 April 2016
Says coal will be important for “many, many decades to come” – 25 October 2016
Seeks changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to stop conservation groups challenging environmental ministerial decisions – October 31, 2016
Says “if anyone had a vested interest in showing you that you could do really smart, clean things with coal, it would be us” – 1 February, 2017
Opens $5 billion infrastructure fund for “clean-coal” power stations – 3 February 2017
Hires Sid Marris, former head of climate and environment at the Minerals Council of Australia, to be his climate and energy adviser – 3 February 2017
Scott Morrison brings a lump of coal to question time and says “This is coal. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared.” – 9 February 2017
Ignores advice that renewable energy was not to blame for South Australian blackouts – 13 February 2017
Oversees 3.4% rise in emissions within 12 months and 7.5% increase since the Abbott-Turnbull government scrapped the carbon price – 01 March 2017
Diverts funds from Clean Energy Finance Corporation to fund coal with carbon capture and storage – 31 May 2017
Stops releasing pollution data that used to be announced on a quarterly basis – 7 July 2017
Attacks South Australian renewable energy policy as “ideology and idiocy in equal measure” – 14 August 2017
Lobbies AGL to delay closure of ageing Liddell coal power station for another five years – 5 September 2017
Dumps Clean Energy Target – 17 October 2017
Plans to reduce environmental spending to less than 60% of 2013-2014 budget – 13 December 2017
Data released in the week before Christmas shows highest greenhouse gas emissions on record when land use change emissions excluded – 19 December 2017
This data shows emissions increasing to 2030 and beyond – 19 December 2017
Declares climate policies are a big success – 19 December 2017
Climate policy review loosens the safeguard mechanism that sets limits on pollution – 19 December 2017
Government fails to list a single piece of critical habitat for protection despite 1800 species and ecological communities being identified as threatened in Australia – 6 Match 2018
Backs Pauline Hanson’s motion for new coal-fired power stations – 27 June 2018
Turnbull’s signature emissions reduction policy, the National Energy Guarantee, described as having ‘no benefit’ to emissions – 18 July 2018.
Personally approves $443m fund for Great Barrier Reef Foundation, an organisation with ties to BHP, Shell and Peabody Energy – 31 July 2018.
Removes emissions reduction target from National Energy Guarantee – 20 August 1018

Scott Morrison is sworn in as the 30th Australian Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison

Appoints Angus Taylor, long-time campaigner against the Renewable Energy Target and a fierce critic of wind energy, as Minister for Energy – 26 August 2018
Appoints Melissa Price, a former general counsel for Crosslands Resources, which owns the Jack Hills iron ore project in Western Australia, as Minister for the Environment – 26 August 2018
Appoints Matt Canavan, who doubts the importance of climate change mitigation and is a strong advocate of Adani’s Carmichael coal mine but dismisses the battery storage facility, the Hornsdale Power Reserve, as the “Kim Kardashian of the energy world”, as Minister for Resources – 26 August 2018
Angus Taylor indicates more taxpayer money for existing coal and gas – 30 August 2018
Revealed that the Marine Park Authority had to scale back surveys in 2017, a year of massive coral bleaching, due to lack of government funds – 2 September 2018
Angus Taylor says there is too much wind and solar in the electricity grid – 5 September 2018
Tries to water down climate change resolution at Pacific Islands forum – 6 September 2018
Union tells Senate inquiry that 87% of members who work in threatened species management in the environment department and other government agencies thought Australia’s effectiveness in protecting critical habitat was poor or very poor – 7 September 2018
Resources Minister Matt Canavan says Paris agreement “doesn’t actually bind us to anything in particular” and doesn’t stop Australia building new coal plants – 7 September 2018
PM says National Energy Guarantee “is dead” – 8 September 2018
Tony Abbott advocates scrapping of renewable energy subsidies – 11 September 2018
Report shows Australia’s transport emissions rose 3.4% from December 2016-December 2017 – 13 September 2018
Angus Taylor announces Morrison government won’t be replacing the renewable energy target “with anything” beyond 2020 – 18 September 2018
Approves private tourism development with helicopter access in Tasmanian world heritage wilderness – 31 August 2018
Morrison says Australia will meet its Paris emissions targets “at a canter” despite no emissions reductions policies and statements from the Energy Security Board to the contrary – 5 September 2018
Australia receives bottom three ranking for environmental policy among wealthy nations – 18 September 2018
Government tells Great Barrier Reef scientists to focus on projects which make the government look good and encourage more corporate donations – 26 September 2018
Releases data showing March quarter increase in emissions of 1.3% on a Friday afternoon, which was a public holiday in Victoria and the same day as the release of the banking sector royal commission interim report – 28 September 2018
Describes $444m Great Barrier Reef Foundation grant as the “right financial decision” – 1 October 2018.
Data reveals 770,000 hectares (three times the size of the ACT) of forests in the Great Barrier Reef catchment zone have been cleared since Tony Abbott was elected in 2013 – 4 October 2018.
Senate inquiry into threatened species told Australia’s environment laws have been “white-anted with loopholes” and hears of “massive and pervasive non-compliance with legislation” – 8 October 2018
PM rules out providing more money for global climate conferences and “all that sort of nonsense”– 8 October 2018
Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack says Australia should “absolutely use and exploit its coal reserves” despite IPCC warnings of climate catastrophe and says Australia wouldn’t change climate policy because of “some sort of report” – 9 October 2018
Matt Canavan responds to the IPCC calls for phasing out coal by 2050 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change by saying “many argue that coal markets are in structural decline when nothing could be further from the truth” and “our coal is the envy of the world and we should promote it proudly” – 9 October 2018
Melissa Price responds to the IPCC report by saying “every year there’s new technology with respect to coal and what it contributes to emissions. So I think to say it’s got to be phased out by 2050 is drawing a very long bow” – 9 October 2018
Angus Taylor says the government would “not be distracted from our goal of lowering power prices for Australian households and small business” and “coal will continue to play a vital role in our energy mix, now and into the future” – 10 October 2018
Former Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg responded to the grave IPCC warnings with “If we take coal out of our energy system, the lights will go out on the East Coast of Australia” – 9 October 2018
Chairman of Coalition’s backbench energy committee Craig Kelly says the government needs to axe renewable energy subsidies – 16 October 2018
Melissa Price reported to have told the former president of Kiribati at a dinner in Canberra ““I know why you are here, it’s for the cash. For the Pacific, it’s always about the cash. I have my cheque book here, how much do you want?” then accused of misleading Parliament over it – 17 October 2018

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