Lethal Heating: 10/29/18

29/10/2018

Will Climate Change Split The Liberal Party?

AFR - Andrew Clark

Divided for a decade over climat change ... Protestors dressed in costumes of Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull at Bondi Surf Bathers SLSC polling booth for the Wentworth byelection. James Brickwood

Cross-dressing is not a top-of-mind Liberal Party metaphor but, politically speaking, that's what it's doing. Robert Menzies' party of government, where a former Liberal prime minister, John Howard, once warned that "disunity is death", is threatening to fragment over climate change.
It is even taking on some of the historic characteristics of the Labor Party, which spent decades in the political wilderness as a result of dividing over issues like communism. "For many years when we talked splits and factions it was Labor, and the Liberals were much less subject to that," says John Warhurst, Emeritus Professor of Politics at the ANU. "Now the boot is on the other foot."
Divisions over climate change have twice contributed to Malcolm Turnbull's loss of the Liberal Party leadership and the prime ministership. Five weeks after he jetted off to New York, the issue continued to fester and played a significant role in the Liberal Party losing Turnbull's formerly blue-ribbon seat of Wentworth.
To be fair, climate change as an issue has dogged both sides of Australian politics for more than a decade. A global failure to come up with firm emissions targets at the 2009 Copenhagen Summit flummoxed the Kevin Rudd-led Labor government, which had framed climate change as the "great moral challenge" of the modern era.

Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Frank Little with Bob Santamaria with painting of former Archbishop of Melbourne Daniel Mannix in the background. Santamaria's formation of the DLP led to a Labor party split that kept the power out of government for years.

Further, an about face on introducing a carbon tax by Rudd's successor and victor in an internal party leadership coup, Julia Gillard, made her an easy target for then opposition leader, Tony Abbott, over what he called a "great big new tax".
But over the past couple of months climate change has morphed into something much bigger and politically destabilising. A centrist like Turnbull, with a past record of supporting an emissions trading scheme (ETS), being forced out of the PM's job by, among others, climate change sceptics like Abbott and Craig Kelly, lent an ideological tinge to a week of brutal blood-letting.
Turnbull and Abbott were bitter rivals with a near decade-old history of supplanting each other as party leader. But the contentious policy issue was Turnbull's carrot-and-stick National Energy Guarantee program. The abandonment of Turnbull's NEG, the role climate change played in the victory of an independent, Dr Kerryn Phelps, in the subsequent Wentworth byelection; and the demonstration effect the Wentworth result, including its climate change element, is having on other, similar, safe Liberal seats, has been stunning.
The metaphor may not be appropriate for climate change, but it's as if an accelerant has been poured on a long-burning fire in Coalition ranks.
This accelerant effect was obvious two weeks before the Wentworth byelection vote at a forum in the iconic Bondi Beach Pavilion. There 14 of the 16 candidates discussed issues ranging from tax policy to the position of refugees on Nauru, population growth and immigration. But the debate kept reverting back to climate change, with many candidates citing the explosive contents of the new IPCC report, released the day before in Incheon, South Korea.

Tony Abbott made Julia Gillard a target over what he called a "great big new tax". David Rowe

'There's always exceptions to the rule'
According to this latest IPCC document, the impacts and costs of a 1.5-degree forecast increase in global warming will be far greater than earlier expected. This follows a decade of record-breaking storms, forest fires, droughts, coral bleaching, heat waves and floods around the world as average mean temperatures increase. The IPCC report, which was based on more than 6000 studies, said the 1.5-degree increase in average temperatures could be reached in as little as 11 years – and almost certainly within 20 years – without major cuts in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
It is these sorts of warnings, combined with what the great American jazz singer Billie Holliday referred to as "stormy weather", that have sharpened differences between Liberal Party moderates like Turnbull, and conservatives like Abbott, over the climate change issue.
It has not split the Liberal Party – so far. But there are reports that independent candidates – many are female, and some, possibly, may even emanate from the Liberal Party – will promote a climate change-related suite of policies, alongside a conservative approach to economic management, in the coming federal election in what had been regarded as safe Liberal seats.
Interestingly, this policy mix does contain elements of earlier peelings away from the Liberal fold. These include the 1966 formation of the Australian Reform Movement – led by the head of the IPEC transport group, Gordon Barton. It sharply differed from the Liberal Party over Australia's military involvement in the Vietnam War while espousing mainstream conservative economic policies. Eleven years later in 1977 former Liberal minister Don Chipp formed the Australian Democrats, a party with centrist characteristics that was later dismissed by then Labor finance minister Peter Walsh as "fairies at the bottom of the garden".
Indeed, "there's little aspects of the story that don't fit", Professor Warhurst acknowledges. "There's always exceptions to the rule. We are yet to see this issue play out and keep the Liberals out of office. But this highly charged situation in the Liberals does remind me of what Labor was like. "
There are echoes going back to the of the great Labor split. The record 23 years Labor spent in opposition from 1949 to 1972 were partly due to the long post-war boom, Liberal Prime Minister Robert Menzies' political dominance, Dr. H.V. Evatt's erratic leadership of the ALP, and Labor clinging to its nationalisation platform. But the principal factor was the communist bogey.
Soon after Menzies won the December 1949, election, "Doc" Evatt proposed banning the communist party. Not long after the first proxy conflict of the Cold War began in the form of the Korean War, inflaming domestic Australian tensions over the communist issue.

Labor divided
From the start, the ALP was sharply divided. "Doc" Evatt campaigned successfully against a later Menzies-sponsored referendum to ban the Australian Communist Party (CPA), warning against the rise of a police state. However, other labor figures were in favour of the ban.
The referendum was lost but the issue was never far from the headlines. There were persistent claims that Labor was "soft on communism", that left-wing members of the ALP such as Jim Cairns were "lover boys of the communist press", that Labor was suspect on issues such as the US Alliance, opposition to the claimed "downward thrust" of Communist China etc.
The issue was central to Labor's great split in 1954, when a largely Catholic, right-wing, virulently anti-communist faction directed by Bob Santamaria, head of the secretive Catholic Social Studies Movement, peeled away from the ALP to form the Democratic Labour Party, or DLP.
With Labor split, and the DLP distributing its preferences to the Coalition, the ALP remained out of office for another 18 years. The incessant, virulent guilt-by-association rhetoric of Santamaria helped to frame Labor during this long period as untrustworthy. It was a political fault line that lasted until the DLP was extinguished as an effective force by the results of the May 1974, double dissolution election.
Now the Liberal Party is threatening to fragment over climate change. Of course, the parallels are inexact and the Liberals have been in office for five years. But as Professor Warhurst points out, "the same apocalyptic language" is being used now on the climate change issue on the Liberal side "as the language which characterised the debate in the 50s and 60s on the Labor side".
Events in coming months will tell us if the parallels will come closer.

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Climate Change Policy: An Unwieldy Wrecking Ball Claiming PM’s Careers

NEWS.com.au - Malcolm Farr

IT HAS already destroyed four prime ministers. And now the very same wrecking ball is about to smash Scott Morrison as well.

Scott Morrison has “big stick” energy policy.
Picture Kym Smith Source: News Corp Australia

IT’S the uncontrollable wrecking ball of Australian politics which so far has smashed the careers of four prime ministers.
And now it could be swinging Scott Morrison’s way, just as it had towards Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard from Labor, and his Liberal colleagues Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull.
This demolition beast is climate change policy and the inability of politicians to present coherent schemes of their own or to resist misrepresenting those of rivals.
To dodge the ball of policy destruction Prime Minister Morrison is attempting to please everyone.
He wants a system which will lower emissions, encourage coal-fired power stations, force private power companies to divest assets, promote new generating technologies, and cut household electricity bills.
It’s a political strategy more than a global warming response, constructed to appease the array of cemented positions on energy policy within the Liberal Party rather than the wishes of consumers, including business.
It has a touch of former prime minister Tony Abbott’s unsuccessful Direct Action scheme and a taste of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s National Energy Guarantee.
And one of its objectives is to blame the power industry, not government, for everything from electricity reliability, price, and technologies.
Scott Morrison is pushing around power companies, threatening them with his “big stick”, in a way he shrank from doing with banks when he was treasurer.
It’s a way of saying, “It’s not our fault you don’t like your electricity bills.”
Which is the gist of Mr Morrison’s comments on the Seven Network on Friday: “That is why we have to put more pressure on the big energy companies so they are doing the right thing by their customers and we are going to back that up with the laws which will give effect to that.
“As I said, we will take the big stick to the energy companies.”

Victims of the wrecking ball? Former PM Malcolm Turnbull and former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.
Picture: Saeed Khan Source: AFP

And the timing is right for this blame shifting as the use of cheaper renewables is starting to lower prices.
The Morrison government will be delighted to take the credit. But it underlines the complexity of the power game here.
Australia alone of developed nations has this preoccupation with climate change as a political battleground.
In Australia we can’t even settle on what is at stake.
Is it what Kevin Rudd called the great moral challenge — which portrayed it as something which can’t be measured by a temperature gauge alone — or is it about using more coal?
The climate change debate here can take many identities as political leaders shuffle around priorities to suit their already-existing positions.
So at one moment it’s not about addressing a changing climate, it’s about the unreliability of renewable energy, or about lowering electricity prices, or about supporting coal resources, or about not being told what to do by the United Nations.
There have been times of confusion as to what was being addressed.

Energy policy was a battleground for former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Picture: Mick Tsikas Source: AAP

What has been clear is that the task is hugely difficult for two reasons Kevin Rudd recently underlined.
One is the daunting task of convincing a current generation to make sacrifices for a future one.
And because of the technical complexity of the climate change responses, which understandably baffle most people. That’s one reason why the Prime Minister uses the clunky term “fair dinkum power” instead of “dispatchable power”.
Desperation has driven some political leaders to absurd proposals.
Remember Julia Gillard’s 2010 “citizens’ assembly”? It was in effect a surrender to the issue and a flick pass to populist opinion.
Stubborn refusal to accept there was a problem at all has clogged policy development. Tony Abbott once declared the science of climate change was “crap” and has only toughened his opinion since then.

Desperation has driven other PM’s to surrender on issues of national importance.
Picture: Kym Smith Source: News Corp Australia

And disgraceful political game playing has made it harder for voters to sift the facts from blatant dishonesty.
Barnaby Joyce set the pace by claiming Labor policies would send the price of the Sunday roast to $100. It was of course rubbish.
It’s that political legacy Scott Morrison is attempting to defy, and the real test is whether he can do so and still produce a viable policy.

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How Plants And Animals Are Teaching Scientists To Fight Climate Change

NBC News - James Rainey

In the emerging field of biomimicry, scientists and inventors take inspiration from trees, whales and coral.

A device designed to help trees grow in deforested regions of the Amazon. Nucleario

The immensity of a program to reforest large swaths of the Amazon is hard to conceive — it aims to plant millions of trees over a remote area of Brazil roughly the size of Pennsylvania. If that wasn’t a big enough challenge, there’s also the threat seedlings face from dry spells, non-native plants and the voracious leaf-cutter ant.
Enter a Brazilian industrial engineer and his partners, who think they have a solution. The team calls their invention Nucleario — a circular device that creates a safe oasis for a young tree, complete with mulchy ground cover, a water cistern to conserve rainfall and a wall to keep out invasive plants and creatures.
The invention was recently awarded a $100,000 prize in a worldwide design challenge, sponsored by the Biomimicry Institute, a Missoula, Montana-based nonprofit that supports scientists and inventors who find solutions to man-made problems with designs inspired by the natural world.
The concept of biomimicry has been around for years. Designers have replicated the skin of the octopus to invent a camouflage surface that could help robots change color and texture. They have studied squid and jellyfish to look for a better propulsion system for submarines. And a Boston research hospital mimicked the behavior of underwater worms to develop a glue that knits together fragile heart muscles.
Now, advocates of such bio-inspired engineering are urging inventors to apply nature’s lessons to the challenge of global warming. Along with Nucleario’s forest-restoration device, finalists in the global design challenge have included a window-mounted device, designed like the rose-shaped frailejon plant, to cool buildings with less electricity, and a roadside filter that mimics the straining properties of baleen whales to clean fine particulate pollution from the air.

Blue Planet Ltd. of California makes various forms of rock and sand by combining carbon dioxide pollution with calcium. The process prevents the greenhouse gas from polluting the atmosphere. Blue Planet

Some of the most promising biomimicry designs have already been deployed, including several that capture carbon dioxide that would otherwise spew into the air and use it to make everything from plastics to a key element of concrete.
Janine Benyus, co-founder of the Biomimcry Institute, said the Nucleario concept is emblematic of solutions drawn from nature.
“Learning about the natural world is one thing. Learning from the natural world — that’s the profound switch,” said Benyus, author of the 1997 book, “Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.” “We need to restore the rainforest quickly, so it makes perfect sense to study the surrounding ecosystem — how the forest floor and local plants create conditions that nurture new trees — and borrow those strategies to do the same."

Learning from the forest
Nucleario grew out of the profound love three Brazilians had for the rainforest that covers much of their country, but that has been degraded by logging and clear-cutting for new farms and development. The World Wildlife Fund estimates the Amazon lost nearly 3.5 million acres of forest a year in the dozen years after 2000. That’s an area the size of Connecticut stripped annually of oxygen-producing and carbon-absorbing forest.
Nucleario co-founder Bruno Rutman was drawn to the problem of deforestation because of a youth spent kayaking, paragliding and climbing in Brazil’s coastal rainforest. In his day job as an industrial designer he worked on products like furniture, but after hours he thought about how his country might meet its commitment, under the Paris climate accord, to replant nearly 30 million acres of forest by 2030.

A team of three Brazilians -- from left, Bruno Rutman, Bruno Ferrari and Pedro Rutman -- recently won a world design competition for their Nucleario, a device designed to help trees grow in deforested regions of the Amazon. Nucleario

Bruno and his brother and partner, Pedro Rutman, sought out experts in forestry, who taught them that getting seedling trees to survive beyond a year was a huge part of the reforestation challenge. Non-native brachiaria grass, favored by dairy farmers, chokes young trees. Leaf-cutter ants mow away foliage, and intermittent rains can leave seedlings without moisture.
The brothers responded with the circular Nucleario, the size of a small bicycle tire and designed to be set into the ground as a protective barrier for a new seedling. The device’s exterior will biodegrade into mulch that keeps the ground moist. The device collects dew and rainwater into a cistern, modeled on those in the bromeliad plant, which can hold up to three gallons of water.
“Our main customer, in a way, is the seedling,” said Bruno Rutman. “Our second customer is the field worker, who is planting all these trees but does not have the time to come and maintain them.”
The Nucleario is still a prototype, with some 500 installed with seedlings in several test patches around Brazil, according to the Biomimicry Institute. The test groves have been funded by grants from universities and the World Wildlife Fund.

Biomimicry in action
Well beyond prototype stage is another innovation, inspired by the way marine organisms, like coral and clams, grow their hard superstructures. Blue Planet Ltd. of Los Gatos, California, is creating rock-like “aggregate” used as the main ingredient in concrete. It creates the material by relying on two waste streams — disposed and unused cement from building projects and carbon dioxide gas from power plants.
Blue Planet takes the carbon dioxide and combines it with a liquid solution to make a bicarbonate. The company then combines calcium drawn from reprocessed cement and mixes it with the bicarbonate to produce calcium carbonate, or limestone. The limestone can be formed into sand or gravel-sized rock — both major components that are mixed with cement to create concrete.
In nature, corals and mollusks combine calcium and carbon dioxide absorbed in seawater and secrete calcium carbonate skeletons, forming shells and coral reefs.
The ultimate impact of the Blue Planet process is that carbon dioxide — Earth’s principal heat-trapping greenhouse gas — is kept out of the atmosphere and is instead “sequestered” into new buildings. “We are taking something that would be released into the atmosphere and contribute to climate change and making something useful out of it,” said Brent Constantz, a marine scientist and Silicon Valley entrepreneur who founded Blue Planet.

Brent Constantz, is a marine scientist and Silicon Valley entrepreneur who figured out a way to "sequester" carbon pollution in building materials. Blue Planet

The company plans to expand, drawing additional carbon dioxide from the Los Medanos power plant in Pittsburg, California, the large natural gas-powered plant that delivers electricity to San Francisco. Already, Blue Planet’s aggregate went into the concrete used to build a new terminal at San Francisco International Airport, which is due to open next summer.
The leader of the agency that oversees air quality in nine San Francisco Bay Area counties said that if the Blue Planet process proves as successful as imagined it could spread to other power plants and heavy polluters, like a cement factory south of San Francisco.
“This process has a lot of promise,” said Jack Broadbent, CEO of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. “Essentially we are learning from nature itself to be able to address a man-made problem.”

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