Coalition Urged To Revive 'Necessary And Inevitable' Emissions Reduction

The Guardian - Katharine Murphy
Business, welfare, climate and energy groups argue policy certainty needed to drive down power costs

Groups including the Business Council of Australia and Acoss say ‘global transition towards lower emissions and ultimately net zero emissions is both necessary and inevitable’. Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP 

Business, welfare, climate and energy groups have urged the Morrison government to put emissions reduction back on the table, warning a “global transition towards lower emissions and ultimately net zero emissions is both necessary and inevitable”.
Ahead of the first meeting of state energy ministers since Scott Morrison dumped the emissions reduction component of the national energy guarantee, a coalition of 15 groups from the Business Council of Australia to the Australian Council of Social Service have warned emissions reduction is not an optional extra.
In a joint statement targeted at federal and state energy ministers before talks this Friday, the groups say driving down power costs – the Morrison’s government’s stated priority – is urgent. But they argue part of the means of achieving that is being clear about future emissions reduction requirements, because that creates policy certainty.
They say “addressing emissions and reliability are not only critical in their own right, but are essential parts of achieving cost reduction”.
Energy ministers on Friday are due to discuss the reliability obligation of the otherwise abandoned Neg, but not the 26% by 2030 emissions reduction target for electricity now ditched by the federal government, with that policy a casualty of the Liberal party’s leadership civil war.
The groups say certainty about the outlook for emissions reduction is critical if Australia’s energy sector is to make an orderly transition, and they warn that policy intervention could be required to help low-income households, displaced workers and emissions intensive trade exposed industries adjust to a low-emissions future.
The groups also make a clear statement that Australia needs to remain in the Paris agreement. “We support Australia’s full participation in the Paris agreement and deployment of effective, efficient and equitable plans in energy and the rest of the economy to deliver on Australia’s Paris commitments,” the groups say.
“Continuing bipartisan commitment to Paris sends a clear long-term signal to investors and contributes to the global solution needed to minimise climate change.”
The signatories to the statement are the Ai Group, the Australian Aluminium Council, the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Australian Council of Social Service, the Australian Energy Council, the Brotherhood of St Laurence, the Business Council of Australia, the Clean Energy Council, the Energy Efficiency Council, Energy Networks Australia, the Energy Users’ Association of Australia, the Investor Group on Climate Change, the Property Council of Australia, the St Vincent de Paul Society and Uniting Communities.
The statement comes as the Morrison government is pressing ahead with a package of measures to reduce power prices, hoping to secure some hip-pocket relief for voters ahead of the next election.
The package has not been well received by business and the energy sector, with several stakeholders alarmed about the government’s threats about breaking up power companies, and about the flow on impact of proposed price regulation.
The federal energy minister, Angus Taylor, will attempt to seek agreement from his state and territory counterparts on Friday to roll out the price measures. In the event the states and territories refuse, Taylor has signalled the commonwealth will override them and make the changes unilaterally.
The government wants power companies to deliver customers out of cycle price reductions in January next year, rather than in July when determinations are normally made, with election timing in mind.
Additionally Taylor wants the states and territories to press ahead with implementing the reliability obligation of the Neg, with a final decision to be made in December.
He argues it is not a problem that his government dumped the emissions reduction obligation because the electricity sector will reduce pollution by 26% in “the early 2020s”.
“We are very confident we are going to get to 26% well ahead of time,” Taylor told Guardian Australia earlier this week. “The numbers are clear.
“There will be a 250% increase in renewables in the next three years. We are going from 17.5 terrawatt hours to 44.4 on the Energy Security Board numbers, and since that work was done there has been almost 1,000 megawatts of new renewable capacity added to the pipeline.
“We are very confident we will get to 26% in the early 2020s.”
The government has also this week flagged backing new private investments in coal-fired power, and possibly indemnifying new projects against the future risk of a carbon price. Labor has criticised that idea.

Links

• Morrison energy pledge at risk from hung parliament
• Addressing all elements of the energy trilemma is essential
• Government could support new coal power 'where it stacks up' – Morrison
• Coalition asks regulator to intervene on electricity prices

Health Experts Slam Government's 'Contemptuous' IPCC Report Response

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Almost two dozen leading Australian health experts have blasted the Morrison government's "contemptuous dismissal" of the findings of the latest major climate report and called for a rapid phasing out of coal.
In a letter published on Thursday in The Lancet, a leading international health journal, the academics and health professionals said the government had ignored the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's special 1.5 degree impact report.
In doing so, it had disregarded "any duty of care regarding the future wellbeing of Australians and our immediate neighbours", the letter states.

Health experts have had their objections to the government's response to the IPCC report published in a leading health journal. 

The letter's authors, including Nobel laureates Peter Doherty and Tilman Ruff, and Professor Fiona Stanley, said Australia was more vulnerable than any other developed nation to climate disruption, much of which would harm health and livelihoods.
These include the amplified frequency, intensity and duration of extreme weather events such as heatwaves.
"As with other established historical harms to human health [such as tobacco], narrow vested interests must be countered to bring about fundamental change in the consumption of coal and other fossil fuels," the letter said.
The disdain shown by the government to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's findings – which include the loss of almost all the Great Barrier Reef if global temperatures rise another degree – meant "it was time for us to speak out", said Tony Capon, Professor of Planetary Health at the University of Sydney, and one of the letter's authors.
"Burning coal is escalating climate change but it also causes toxic pollution that has direct health effects," Professor Capon said.
The letter called for national and international pressure on the government with a five-step "call to action" that included "commitment to no new or expanded coal mines and no new coal-fired power stations, phase out existing coal-fired power stations, and rapidly remove all subsidies to fossil fuel industries".
It also opposed the development of the giant Adani coal mine in Queensland and roughly doubling Australia's Paris climate goals to reduce 2005-level carbon emissions by half by 2030.
Melissa Price, the federal environment minister, said was "absolutely false" to state the government had rejected the IPCC's findings.


Coal-powered electricity must be phased out by 2050 and renewable energy needs significant uptake in order to prevent global warming reaching 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Vision: Australian Academy of Science. 

"We have consistently stated that the IPCC is a trusted source of scientific advice that we will continue to take into account on climate policy," Ms Price said.
"The IPCC Report does not present a total phase-out of coal by 2050 as the only modelled pathway to limit global warming," she said, adding that "we have a responsible emissions reduction target of 26-28 per cent and we will do our part to address this global issue."

Treasury blindspot
Separately, new Treasury Secretary Phil Gaetjens admitted in Senate estimates that Treasury had not done any modelling of the difference in impacts on Australia's economy from a 1.5 degree warming in global temperatures compared with 2 degrees.
That warming is against pre-industrial times and the planet has warmed about 1 degree since then.
"We do not do modelling on that," Mr Gaetjens said. "There wouldn’t be any information in a quantitative sense that I could provide at the moment."
Mr Gaetjens also stated he had not had time to read the IPCC report.
"I have had, in the two and a bit months I have been there, lots of things to look at, and unfortunately that’s one I haven’t got to," he said, adding that he accepted climate change would have an economic impact on the nation.
Greens sentor Larissa Waters said climate change was the biggest economic issue facing Australia and as such Treasury should provide serious analysis just as they would on the impact of higher US interest rates.
“The government has its head in the sand on climate change, but Treasury should be advising government of the immense economic risk of continuing to blindly boost for new coal, and the huge economic opportunities in clean energy," Senator Waters said.

Links

• Report: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C
• 'Next decade critical': Perils mount at 1.5 degrees of warming, says IPCC
• Mining sector, Morrison government on the defensive over IPCC report
• States' Climate Risks Are Rising, Led By Health Impacts: Moody's
• Climate Change Leading To 'Solastalgia', The Feeling You Get When Your Home Is Wrecked
• The Divisive Issue Australia Can No Longer Ignore
• Climate Change Could Affect Human Evolution. Here's How.
• Scientists Are Finally Linking Extreme Weather To Climate Change
• Halfway To Boiling: The City At 50c
• Heatwave-Related Deaths Influenced By Prior Acclimatisation To Warmth
• Why there's a perfectly rectangular iceberg floating in Antarctica

Latest Climate Change Report Shows Inaction Is Shameful

AFR - Martin Wolf | Financial Times

We need to shift the world on to a different investment and growth path immediately

We are the shapers of the planet now. This ought to transform how we think. Unfortunately, it has not.

Aviation Images / Alamy Stock Photo

It is five minutes to midnight on climate change. We will have to alter our trajectory very quickly if we wish to have a good chance of limiting the global average temperature rise to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. That was a goal of the Paris agreement of 2015. Achieving it means drastic reductions in emissions from now. This is very unlikely to happen. That is no longer because it is technically impossible. It is because it is politically painful. We are instead set on running an irreversible bet on our ability to manage the consequences of a far bigger rise even than 2C. Our progeny will see this as a crime.
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is on the implications of warming of just 1.5C and also on the means by which that might be achieved. It reads like a reductio ad absurdum – a demonstration of the implausibility of its premise. But it makes plain, too, the risks the world runs if this limit is ignored: life will survive, but not life as we know it.
Underlying this report is the idea of the Anthropocene – an era in which human activity has become a dominant influence on the planet. The report notes that the rise in global concentrations of carbon dioxide is 20 parts per million per decade. This is up to 10 times faster than any sustained rise in CO2 in the past 800,000 years. The previous epoch with similar CO2 concentrations to today's was the Pliocene, 3 million-3.3 million years ago. We are the shapers of the planet now. This ought to transform how we think. Unfortunately, it has not.
The starting point of any analysis has to be the overwhelming theoretical and empirical arguments for man-made climate change. Not so long ago, people talked about a "pause" in global warming. But that was an artefact of a comparison between an El Niño year (the warming of the eastern equatorial Pacific) in 1997-98 with the normal (albeit hot) years that followed. But the El Niño of 2014-16 far surpassed the previous record. The rise in average temperatures above the pre-industrial average is already about 1C. That shows how hard it will be to keep the final increase below 1.5C, or even 2C. Under the "nationally determined contributions", we are in fact on a track towards warming of 3-4C by 2100. Donald Trump has already repudiated the US pledge. Other countries may fail, too.



So what needs to change?
So what needs to change if we are to have a high chance of keeping the ultimate temperature rise to below 1.5C? Net global CO2 emissions would need to fall to zero not long after 2040, and other sources of climate change – emissions of methane and nitrous oxide, for example – would also need to fall from 2030. A fall in net CO2 emissions to zero by 2055 only makes it likely that the temperature rise will be below 2C. A difference of a half a degree is surprisingly important. The IPCC states that "limiting global warming to 1.5C is projected to reduce risks to marine biodiversity, fisheries, and ecosystems, and their functions and services to humans, as illustrated by recent changes to Arctic sea ice and warm water coral reef ecosystems". This matters.
The report discusses a number of different paths to the huge fall in emissions the 1.5C goal requires. Emissions from industry would need to fall by 75-90 per cent by 2050, relative to 2010. This would need a combination of electrification, hydrogen, sustainable bio-based feedstocks and product substitution. These options are technically proven, but their deployment on a planetary scale is another matter. Emissions reductions by efficiency improvement – vital though that is, as Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute argues – will be inadequate. Also necessary will be big changes in urban infrastructure and planning. Agriculture will need to shift to production of energy crops on a huge scale. Also necessary will be carbon capture and storage on a large scale.
In all, we need to shift the world on to a different investment and growth path right now. This is more technically possible than we used to think. But it is politically highly challenging. Above all, climate change involves huge distributional issues – between rich countries and poor ones, between countries that caused the problem and those that did not, between countries that matter for the solution and those that do not and, not least, between people today, who make the decisions, and people tomorrow, who suffer the results. The natural tendencies are either to do nothing, while insisting there is no problem, or to agree there is a problem, while merely pretending to act. It is not clear which form of obfuscation is worse.

The El Niño of 2014-16 far surpassed the previous record. NASA

Might be disastrously wrong
One line of argument against action is that we do not know how costly climate change will prove to be. But this argument evidently cuts both ways. The scale of the uncertainty is an argument for action, not inaction. Nobody really knows what risks humanity will ultimately find it has run by continuing on its present course. But we do know that our descendants are quite likely to end up on a different planet, with no way back to our own. The bet that our descendants will then cope might be correct. But it might also be disastrously wrong. The sane choice must surely be to preserve the planet we have.
Yet doing that, as is by now quite clear, requires co-operative effort on a planetary scale. It will not be achieved by nibbling around the edges. This is a scale of challenge human beings have historically only met in times of war, and then only against one another. The chances of co-operative action seem near zero in today's nationalistic world. One need only consider the response to this report from the IPCC – essentially a collective yawn – to realise that. Yet let us not fool ourselves: we are risking a world of runaway – and unmanageable – climate chaos. We could do far better than that.

The IPCC states that "limiting global warming to 1.5C is projected to reduce risks to marine biodiversity, fisheries, and ecosystems, and their functions and services to humans, as illustrated by recent changes to Arctic sea ice and warm water coral reef ecosystems". Supplied

Links

• Coal power finished by 2050 if temperature increase kept to 1.5 degrees: IPCC
• So what came before time?
• Liberal moderates to demand $1 billion for climate change fund
• How much will climate change really cost? It's getting even more expensive.