Lethal Heating: February 2019

28/02/2019

The Forgotten Climate Change Crises: Decline In Bogong Moth Numbers Leaves Pygmy Mountain Possums Starving

The Guardian - Graham Readfearn

Exclusive: climate change linked to ‘astonishing’ drop in bogong moth numbers, the key food source for possums while breeding

The mountain pygmy possum population is threatened again because of the dramatic decline in bogong moths. Photograph: Zoos Victoria/AFP/Getty Images

Numbers of unique Australian moths that migrate in their billions to alpine areas have crashed, ecologists say, putting extra pressure on the endangered mountain pygmy possum.
Scientists believe the “astonishing” drop in bogong moth numbers is linked to climate change and recent droughts in areas where the moths breed.
At the same time checks on the endangered mountain pygmy possum, which exists only in Australia’s alpine regions, have revealed dead litters in the pouches of females. The moths are a key food source for the possums as they wake from hibernation.
In 2018, scientists revealed bogong moths were the only known insect to use the earth’s magnetic field to help them navigate from grasslands in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland – sometimes at distances of 1,000km. Around two billion moths are estimated to make the journey.
The ecologist Dr Ken Green has been monitoring bogong moths for 40 years. He said: “Last summer numbers were atrocious. It was not just really bad, it was the worst I had ever seen. Now this year it’s got even worse.”
The moths find caves and cracks in boulders to hide away in a torpor state. A cave at Mount Gingera, near Canberra, has been known to house millions of the moths but last month Green and colleagues counted just three individuals. Searches of about 50 known sites have turned up similar catastrophic absences.
“They haven’t just declined. They’ve gone,” he said. “We have done mountains from down to the Victorian border all the way to Canberra. We have checked every cave we know.”
A site at South Ramshead in the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales had just 1,000 moths last year. “That is very, very low,” says Green.
“This year we found just six moths. Last week we went back and there were none.”
Green believes the cause of the crash is drought in the moth’s breeding areas. The Bureau of Meteorology has said the drought was exceptional in those areas, but noted there had been similar dry periods in the 1960s and earlier.

Impact on the endangered mountain pygmy possums
Dean Heinze, an associate at Latrobe University, has been monitoring and researching mountain pygmy possums since the early 1990s. The possum populations are spread across Kosciuszko national park in New South Wales, and in Victoria at Mount Bogong, Mount Higginbotham and Mount Buller.

Scientists think the ‘astonishing’ drop in bogong moth numbers is linked to climate change, with extensive droughts in recent years in locations where the moths breed before migrating to alpine regions. Photograph: Auscape International/Alamy

As the possums emerge from hibernation in September and October, the moths are a key food source as they breed and raise young.
“Bogong moths are an incredible food source and very high in protein. Last year we found that some populations of possums were losing litters. It’s happening again this year. We think that the fewer moths means the possums are carrying less weight and losing the litters.”
In recent weeks Heinze has visited about 12 locations in Victoria and discovered dead litters in female pouches at “most of the sites.”
“It’s a widespread event,” he said. “I inspect the reproductive system of the animal and I look in their pouch to see how many young there are. I have been opening pouches and discovering dead and decomposing young ... For some, the young have been dead for days.
“The concern is that over time, if this happens more frequently we will see declines in the adult population as well. And this is the second year that they have lost litters. The litmus test will be next season.”
Around Mount Buller in Victoria, the possum habitat is fragmented by ski resorts. Captive breeding and release programs have been used to keep numbers up.
“We have put a huge effort into the population at Mount Buller,” says Heinze. “We have brought the population back from the brink and now we have this happening. I’m optimistic, but if we get more of this then it doesn’t look good. Here we are dealing with a species that only occurs in the alps, but what’s impacting it is happening hundreds of kilometres away.”
In 2016, a national recovery plan was agreed for the possum, outlining multiple threats including habitat degradation, predation by invasive cats and foxes and climate change.
A study published in October 2018 and led by scientists at the New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage looked at the climate change threats to the possums and the moths. The study suggested the moths had a “reduced survival in a warmer world” and this would “likely further affect survival” of the possums.
Prof Lesley Hughes, an ecologist at Macquarie University and councillor at the Climate Council of Australia, said the potential role of climate change in the decline of the moths and possums were what ecologists and climate scientists had predicted.
“Unfortunately the general predictions of the ecological risks of climate change are now turning into observations for particular species. And it should be no surprise we are seeing these impacts in the alpine zone, long recognised as one of the most vulnerable ecosystems to climate risks.
“Sometimes these changes can appear to happen abruptly – one year there are millions of moths and the next almost none. This shows how particular extreme events, such as droughts or severe bushfires, can suddenly tip a species over the edge, with flow-on effects to others in the ecosystem.”
The environment minister, Melissa Price, said she was aware of the reports of low bogong moth numbers and the government was working with a leading possum researcher “to understand the potential toll that reduced number of moths may be having on the species”.
The removal of feral cats and foxes in Kosciusko national park was helping possum protection, she said, and two government-backed projects were tackling weed infestations, building resilience to climate change, and managing loss of genetic diversity among possums in the Victorian Alpine region.
Victoria’s Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning spokesperson Adrian Moorrees said the reduction in moths “is likely to be due to recent droughts” in NSW and Queensland.
He said tools and processes were being developed “to better monitor and predict the impact of bogong moth populations on endangered mountain pygmy possums.”
A spokesperson for the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage said no litter deaths were reported in NSW possum populations, but the drought was believed to have impacted most species.
He said when moth numbers were low, possums turned to other food sources, including insects, fruits and nectar, adding “OEH will continue to implement the species recovery plans for the mountain pygmy possum.”

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Scott Morrison's Pea-And-Thimble Trick

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Did you notice that the Morrison government has slashed Australia's Paris climate target in half, a detail that somehow escaped scrutiny in the flurry of climate policies announced this week?
No? Well, neither did most of the country.

Backing black: Then federal Treasurer Scott Morrison brought a lump of coal to question time in February 2017. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

On paper, Australia remains committed to cutting 2005-level emissions 26 per cent by 2030.
According to environment department officials called to Senate estimates last week, that means the nation has to reduce - abate - a total of 695 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent in the decade of 2021-2030.
But as we also had confirmed last week, the government plans to use credits earned during the current Kyoto Protocol - the global climate accord Kevin Rudd signed Australia up to in 2007 - to count against the Paris target.
Indeed, the "Climate Solutions Package" released on Monday makes no effort to hide the use of these Kyoto "carryover" credits - even if they're oddly bundled with the unrelated Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro plan.

Source: Morrison Government

So, booking those credits, Australia's 695 million tonnes of abatement task shrinks to just 328 million tonnes. Our Paris goal has just magically become 12.25 per cent, or less than half the 26 per cent "headline" reduction. Again, on paper, the presumed cost of getting off fossil fuels suddenly got a lot smaller. How good is that?
Actually not so good.
For one thing, the Paris accord was meant to be a reset for all nations, in order to more aggressively reduce the greenhouse gas emissions than under Kyoto. Whatever surplus credits nations had built up were not intended to count. That's why Germany, the UK and Sweden were among nations to cancel surplus credits they built up during the Kyoto period.
Second, nations like Russia and Ukraine are eying similar get-out-climate-actions cards.
Third, delays of real action means Australia's emissions, rising since 2014 are likely to continue to do so. Delays in taking decarbonising the economy means missed opportunities and possibly higher costs later.

'Rot forever'
Prime Minister Scott Morrison touts the pea-and-thimble game as a national triumph.
"Australia has been successful," he told 7.30 on Monday.
"We took a...750-million tonne deficit on what was required to meet our 2020 [Kyoto] targets when we were first elected, and that is going to be turned around to a 367-million tonne surplus," he said.
"So we've had a 1.1 billion-tonne turnaround under our management as a result of the climate change action policies we put in place."
Setting aside the utility of those "action policies" - and the jury has a lot ot weigh - the celebration of this "success" is actually premature.
For one thing, the public, once alerted, may not be so accepting of this particular "climate solution".
And analysts such as Malte Meinshausen - who heads the Australian-German Climate and Energy College at Melbourne University and served as a negotiator at climate talks - say United Nations rules reject the use of carry-over credits from the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol (2008-2012) to count for Paris.
"Under Kyoto Protocol rules, there are deliberately no carry-over rules for any credits that sit in the [Previous period surplus reserve]," Associate Professor Meinshausen says.
"Thus, the credits that are shifted after [the first phase of Kyoto] into the [reserve] sit there and rot there forever, but cannot be carried over into any subsequent commitment period."
By his estimate, that would immediately annul the 128 million tonnes - or about a third - of the surplus Morrison is counting.

'Survival'
The second period of Kyoto runs until 2020, and the use of remaining "credits' can't be banked on either.
The Paris rulebook is still be drawn up, but as New Zealand's climate minister James Shaw said last December, the use of such a "surplus" was against the spirit of the Paris accord.
The European Union will also likely want a clarification.
Whether a stink gets kicked up or not depends a lot on federal Labor.
It has dismissed "accounting tricks" but also said it would "take advice" if it won office in May as whether the credits can be used.
However, as Anote Tong, the former president of Kiribati told me on Tuesday, climate change is an "existential risk" for Pacific nations such as his as storms intensify and sea levels rise. Accounting changes don't reduce that threat.
"We need to step forward with genuine commitment," he said.
"We're not talking, really, numbers. We're talking about the survival of people."

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The Government Thinks We’re Idiots And Is Not Serious About Reducing Emissions

The Guardian - Greg Jericho

Tackling climate change is tough and Scott Morrison’s latest policy is an insult

We don’t need this current putrid policy from the government. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

After Scott Morrison’s announcement of his new climate change policy we know two things – the government still thinks we’re idiots, and they are still not serious about reducing emissions.
I guess we should be grateful that at least the government now realises it needs to look as if it gives a damn about reducing emissions, because for a while they couldn’t even be bothered to do that.
But stuff it. I’m done with giving out prizes for pretence. I’m done with being satisfied with something not even worthy of being called a fourth-best policy. I’m done with the lies.
Do not for one second think this is a policy designed to reduce emissions. It is a political Band-Aid while the actual wound to our economy from its greenhouse gas dependency is open and festering.
It is a fraud, and not even a new one.
It’s the same bulldust that the Liberal National party has been selling the public for nigh on a decade with a different badge. Gone is the Emissions Reduction Fund; say hello to the “Climate Solutions Fund”.
This fund of $2bn over 10 years is not just a rebranding of Tony Abbot’s Direct Action, it is actually a diminishment of it. At $200m a year on average it is less than half the money a year that was spent on Direct Action – a policy that was so laughably bad that a government with any level of shame would quietly have dumped it and pretended it never happened.
Yet, here we are. Nine years after Lenore Taylor ripped apart the Liberal party’s policy of reliance on “soil magic”, we have the prime minister still thinking such measures of carbon sequestration are worth pursuing and will achieve anything close to what is required.
But before we go further, let’s bring out the graphs again.
First the one showing annual greenhouse gas emissions going back to 2004. You’ve seen it before, it shows that yes, a price on carbon reduces emissions:

The next one shows the most recent projections for our emissions. These are the government’s own figures. And they show we are a long way from being on target to reduce emissions by either 26% or 28% below 2005 levels:

So we have that reality, but the prime minister says we will meet the target “in a canter”. Why? Because our target will also include “carryover credits” which comes from exceeding our Kyoto reduction commitment.
That might be defensible if our Kyoto commitment did not already include some dodgy work involving the counting of land use, land-use change and forestry, which allowed us to reach our target even if we actually increased our emissions.
It means we are using dodgy counting of previous dodgy counting to meet our targets.
The University of Melbourne’s Dylan McConnell estimates over half of the reduction will come via this trick accounting method, while 15% will come via “technology improvements and other sources of abatement” which is code for, “dunno, but here’s hoping someone does something good, in spite of our efforts”.
But you don’t really need to be told the ins and outs of this policy. You know it is a terrible joke on us all – the suggestion that we can do what is needed on climate change by spending a mere $200m a year.
With annual GDP of around $1,950bn, that represents just 0.01% this year, and because our GDP will grow, by 2030, $200m will be a mere 0.006% of GDP.
Now let us look at our emissions compared with other nations in the OECD:

Yes, the United States emits a lot more than we do, but when you look at per capita and per GDP you see how integral greenhouse gas emissions are to our economy. Australia is basically the most carbon-dependent economy in the OECD.
Yet the government would have you believe it can all be done painlessly. Just write a cheque for a mere $200m a year – less than is spent on SBS each year, and we’re done?
Do you really think that governments around the world have been avoiding action on climate change for the past three decades because they would have to spend this pathetic amount?
If that was all that was needed, we wouldn’t even be worrying. It would have been done.
The reality is cutting emissions is going to be tough. We are finally paying the bill for 200 years of gorging on carbon for free; and the bill is large.
We need to be honest about this. If it was easy – anywhere near as easy as what Scott Morrison or Tony Abbott or Josh Frydenberg would have you believe – it would have already been done. The reason it hasn’t is because it is bloody hard.
But it needs to happen and I have a few graphs to illustrate why.
First, the average annual temperature over the past 60 years:

Remember when all the climate-change deniers (for deniers they are) said 1998 was the hottest year and the planet had not warmed since then? Well the temperature anomaly of the past five years have averaged almost 40% more than what was reached in that year.
What if we extrapolated out the 20-year trend since 1998 into the future? If we use an absurdly conservative linear trend we reach 2C above pre-industrial levels by 2066 – just 47 years time.
But if we use a more realistic exponential trend line, we get there by 2049. A point at which my 15-year-old daughter would be the same age I am now:

Enough with the lies and fraudulent policy. It is beyond time for politicians to be honest with us. Action on climate change will be tough, and we need to stop pretending it can be done with ease.
What we don’t need is this current putrid policy from the government. They have shown they cannot get serious about the issue; it’s time they got out of the way.

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27/02/2019

Evidence For Man-Made Global Warming Hits 'Gold Standard': Scientists

Reuters - Alister Doyle

OSLO - Evidence for man-made global warming has reached a “gold standard” level of certainty, adding pressure for cuts in greenhouse gases to limit rising temperatures, scientists said on Monday.

Ocean water is pushed up by the bottom of a pinnacle iceberg as it falls back during a large calving event at the Helheim glacier near Tasiilaq, Greenland, June 22, 2018. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

“Humanity cannot afford to ignore such clear signals,” the U.S.-led team wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change of satellite measurements of rising temperatures over the past 40 years.
They said confidence that human activities were raising the heat at the Earth’s surface had reached a “five-sigma” level, a statistical gauge meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that the signal would appear if there was no warming.
Such a “gold standard” was applied in 2012, for instance, to confirm the discovery of the Higgs boson subatomic particle, a basic building block of the universe.
Benjamin Santer, lead author of Monday’s study at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, said he hoped the findings would win over skeptics and spur action.
“The narrative out there that scientists don’t know the cause of climate change is wrong,” he told Reuters. “We do.”
Mainstream scientists say the burning of fossil fuels is causing more floods, droughts, heat waves and rising sea levels.
U.S. President Donald Trump has often cast doubt on global warming and plans to pull out of the 197-nation Paris climate agreement which seeks to end the fossil fuel era this century by shifting to cleaner energies such as wind and solar power.
Sixty-two percent of Americans polled in 2018 believed that climate change has a human cause, up from 47 percent in 2013, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

Satellite Data
Monday’s findings, by researchers in the United States, Canada and Scotland, said evidence for global warming reached the five sigma level by 2005 in two of three sets of satellite data widely used by researchers, and in 2016 in the third.
Professor John Christy, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville which runs the third set of data, said there were still many gaps in understanding climate change. His data show a slower pace of warming than the other two sets.
“You may see a certain fingerprint that indicates human influence, but that the actual intensity of the influence is minor (as our satellite data indicate),” he told Reuters.
Separately in 2013, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that it is “extremely likely”, or at least 95 percent probable, that human activities have been the main cause of climate change since the 1950s.
Peter Stott of the British Met Office, who was among the scientists drawing that conclusion and was not involved in Monday’s study, said he would favor raising the probability one notch to “virtually certain”, or 99-100 percent.
“The alternative explanation of natural factors dominating has got even less likely,” he told Reuters.
The last four years have been the hottest since records began in the 19th century.
The IPCC will next publish a formal assessment of the probabilities in 2021.
“I would be reluctant to raise to 99-100 percent, but there is no doubt there is more evidence of change in the global signals over a wider suite of ocean indices and atmospheric indices,” said Professor Nathan Bindoff, a climate scientist at the University of Tasmania.

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Australian Insurers Say 'Act Now' On Climate Change

AFR - James Fernyhough

If you want to know the mundane, annoying reality of climate change, talk to an insurer. They won't paint apocalyptic pictures of wars and famines, or of seas lapping against the 20th-floor windows of skyscrapers. They'll tell you about all the boring but endlessly irritating ways climate change will make life worse. Two words: water damage.
The general insurance industry is taking the financial risks of climate change more seriously than any other industry – with the possible exception of coal miners, for very different reasons – because it's already hitting their bottom lines.

IAG and Suncorp, two of Australia's biggest insurers, reported falls in half-year profit in February, and in both cases extreme weather events were a major factor. Insurance brokerage Steadfast, announcing its own results, predicted an increase in extreme weather events would push insurance premiums up for at least another two years.

Local residents in flood water in the suburb of Hermit Park in Townsville. Insurers want properties to be better strengthened against such extreme weather events. Dan Peled

Climate change will only make things worse. According the CSIRO's 2018 State of the Climate report, Australia's warming climate will bring more extreme weather events: floods caused by more intense rainfall and rising sea levels, wind and rain damage from more intense tropical cyclones; and increased bushfires as a result of hotter, drier weather in southern Australia.
There are two ways of dealing with this. One is the faltering international effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which would limit warming and avoid the worst outcomes. The other is to prepare communities for the worst.
Insurance companies have generally avoided weighing into the politically-charged emissions debate, focusing instead on building resilient communities. That essentially means flood and storm-proofing properties. Both IAG and Suncorp have teams dedicated to understanding changing weather patterns.
"The first thing is making sure we're doing the right pricing and underwriting, for the short-term profitability of our business," says Mark Leplastrier, IAG's senior manager natural perils. But as increasing numbers of communities become high-risk, he says the natural perils team is asking, "What are the options there to reduce some of that risk?"

"We've been sponsoring the Cyclone Testing Station since the early 2000s. Early on they were focusing more on wind loads for instance. But I was saying we're seeing a lot of damage through our claims caused by wind-driven water into buildings."

He says claims data provided by IAG and Suncorp to Cyclone Testing Station – part of James Cook University – helped them understand exactly what was causing the damage, and has resulted in changes to the National Construction Code.

Cleaning up after flooding in Townsville in February. Climate change is creating a high level of uncertainty for insurers. Dan Peled

"So they've been able to drive changes to garage door specifications. There are heaps of garage door failures that then lead to other failures of buildings. They've also been able to change the outer cladding features in the Australian standard. Bits of roof would fall off because the specification wasn't quite up to scratch."
Leplastrier says climate change introduces a high level of uncertainty. "Are we building enough buffer there to be able to absorb enough of that uncertainty? That's the kind of question we need to be more and more involved with," he says. One key challenge is getting local authorities to rethink flood danger before they approve new builds. He says where local authorities will only consider the 100-year flood level – that is, the highest flood level in a 100-year period – insurers are considering much longer time scales.
"From an insurance perspective, we will say what does to 200, 500, 1000-year flood look like, what are the depths, and what are the financial consequences?" he says.

'We need action now'
Suncorp chief executive Michael Cameron, following a 44.7 per cent fall in profits in February largely thanks to a freak hail storm in Sydney in December, said the government needs to do two things: first, it needs to force companies to adopt climate change action plans; and second, it needs to invest more in climate change-proofing Australian communities.

Suncorp saw a 44.7 per cent fall in profits in February largely thanks to a freak hail storm in Sydney in December. Nick Moir, Supplied

So what is Suncorp doing itself to deal with the problem? The Insurance chief executive Gary Dransfield cites the company's "Protecting the North" program which he says is "targeted at reducing the damage that cyclones can cause to homes, while also making insurance more accessible". He claims the program has seen more than 40,000 policyholders in northern Australia reduce their premiums by strengthening their home and property.
"Suncorp has also championed flood mitigation in several vulnerable parts of the state," he says. "In 2013, we decided to cease writing new policies in Roma which had been hit with successive floods during that period."
He says this controversial move was "the right one" because it forced a levee protecting the town to be built. As a result Suncorp could reduce premiums, some by up to 90 per cent. Suncorp also advocated for the South Rockhampton Flood Levee.
Insurance companies are not acting out of the goodness of their hearts, but for straightforward business reasons. If communities are open to major damage to increasingly brutal weather events, then insurance companies will simply not be able to bear the risk – which will leave everyone worse off.

Optus chairman Paul O'Sullivan says the telco is adapting its infrastructure to climate change forecasts. Christopher Pearce

Dransfield says Australia needs to develop "a resilience culture", and claims for every dollar spent on resilience there can be $13 of benefits.
"That means communities, industries and governments embedding resilience in more decisions, more planning and more business practices. We don't want this cultural shift to be borne out of tragedy. We are a smart, innovative and bold nation with enormous expertise and know-how when it comes to disasters. We can build more cyclone, flood and fire resilient communities but we need action now," he says.

Enter telcos and banks
Climate change, believe it or not, won't only affect insurers. The Australian Business Roundtable for Disaster Resilience and Safer Communities, which promotes weather-proofing communities, includes the CEOs of insurers IAG and Munich Re. But it also has representatives from the Red Cross, Westpac, Investa Property Group, and Optus.
Optus chairman Paul O'Sullivan says it's natural for a telecommunications company to be part of the push because, as a vital infrastructure owner, they are vulnerable to extreme weather events and, when extreme events do occur, even more important to customers than usual.
He says since 2001 Optus has spent between $1 and $2 billion a year on its infrastructure. "That gives us an authenticity and plausibility when we talk about these matters," he says.
The goal of the roundtable, he says, is to "assist government to make this a priority". He lists three key areas: including resilience planning in all future infrastructure; improving resilience when replacing or upgrading existing infrastructure; and generally improving awareness. While he says governments are "very receptive", money is an issue.
"I do think we're winning the argument, but it takes time. I think the biggest constraint obviously are budgets. So this obviously requires a redirection of some the investment in budget into resilience," he says. A flick through the 2018 federal budget suggests the federal government does not consider the issue a priority.
But like IAG and Suncorp, O'Sullivan says Optus is doing plenty off its own bat, working closely with the CSIRO to prepare for changes in weather patterns.
"We look at the CSIRO model, and what that tells us is there is a significant potential for cyclones to move further south, particularly along the Queensland coast where there is significant population, and where we invest very significantly in mobile coverage and in fixed line infrastructure," he says.
"So what we've been doing along that coastline is upgrading the quality of our mobile base stations and towers to be cyclone strength much further south than we would have done historically. In areas which are open to flood plain, we've been looking to raise the height at which we put equipment, particularly riding equipment or any sensitive electronic equipment, and we've also been doing work on re-mapping the way we deploy electricity generators."

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Snowy 2.0 Project Given Funds And Approval For Early Work Phase By Federal Government

ABC - Eliza Laschon

The initial approval comes after two years of engineering and financial modelling. (Supplied: Snowy Hydro )

Key points

The project is estimated to cost between $3.8 billion and $4.5 billion
It would multiply generating capacity by 150 per cent and could power 500,000 homes during peak demand
The Government said it would create 2,400 jobs

The Federal Government has committed funding and approved the Snowy 2.0 project as a measure in its renewable energy pitch — the former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull's pet project.
It represents a significant step forward and financial commitment towards the progress of the long-term engineering project that aims to put a new underground power station in a remote corner of the Snowy Mountains.
The Government has given the company responsible, Snowy Hydro, shareholder approval to proceed to the "early works stage" after reviewing its business case, concluding it is "satisfied that it stacks up".
Prime Minister Scott Morrison will on Tuesday be on site in New South Wales to commit "up to $1.38 billion in an equity investment for Snowy 2.0".
"It's absolutely fair dinkum power, it doesn't get more fair dinkum than this," he said.

"We have been on this job for two years to get to this point. That's a lot of homework that has been done to go into the estimates upon which we have made our investment decision today."

IMAGE

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the project during his time in office, and took to social media to say he was pleased it was given the green light.
The plan revives the Snowy Hydro Scheme in the Great Diving Range.
The Snowy 2.0 project will link the Talbingo and Tantangara reservoirs in Kosciuszko National Park.
The rest of the project will be funded by Snowy Hydro.
In recent reports, the company estimated it would cost somewhere between $3.8 billion and $4.5 billion and multiply Snowy Hydro's generating capacity by 150 per cent.

The Snowy 2.0 project would create 2,400 jobs, the Government said. (ABC News: Greg Nelson)

Early work to begin as soon as Friday
Snowy Hydro CEO Paul Broad said work was due to begin on the 'enormously complex' project this Friday, and would take at least five years to complete.
An underground network of tunnels stretching almost 50 kilometres will be dug to allow the project to deliver energy to the grid.
Mr Broad argued Snowy Hydro 2.0 was viable, despite drought conditions becoming more frequent across the country.
"The water in the storage is released, that storage is released downstream, it gets recycled in the storages, so that gives it a fair bit of drought protection, in a sense," he told the ABC's AM program.

"When the droughts come now, we pump like mad."

Snowy 2.0 will help cut energy costs, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said. (ABC News: Natalie Whiting)

The Federal Opposition is demanding the business case for the project be released.
"Today's announcement takes the spend on Snowy to about $7.5 billion," Shadow Energy Minister Mark Butler told AM, arguing that figure took into account the purchase of the project from the New South Wales and Victorian governments.

"So, certainly we're supportive in principle, but we do want to be able to kick the tyres on this thing."

The Government said the project will provide 175 hours of energy storage, enough to power 500,000 homes during peak demands.
It said the project would create 2,400 jobs and 5,000 direct and indirect jobs across the region.
The project was repeatedly spruiked by former prime minister Mr Turbulll, who had said the critical thing was "engineering and economics".
The plan comes as part of the Government's new pre-election climate change policy, where it pledged $2 billion for projects to bring down emissions.
The policy, or Climate Solutions Fund, is an extension of former prime minister Tony Abbott's Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF).

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26/02/2019

Scott Morrison Announces $2 Billion Climate Solutions Fund To Reduce Australia's Emissions

ABC - Jade Macmillan

Scott Morrison outlines his new climate change policy. (ABC News)

Key points

The policy is an extension of former prime minister Tony Abbott's Emissions Reduction Fund
Mr Morrison said the new scheme would play a "key" role in helping Australia meet the commitment to reduce emissions by 2030
Senior Liberals had flagged the need for new climate policies ahead of the expected election in May

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has launched a new pre-election climate change policy, pledging $2 billion for projects to bring down Australia's emissions.
The Climate Solutions Fund is an extension of former prime minister Tony Abbott's Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF).
"It's important to have a balance in your emissions reductions policies. You've got to have the cool head as well as the passionate heart," Mr Morrison said.
"Our Government will take, and is taking, meaningful, practical, sensible, responsible action on climate change without damaging our economy or your family budget."
The Prime Minister has repeatedly said Australia would meet its Paris commitment of reducing emissions by 26 to 28 per cent by 2030 "in a canter", despite recent government projections casting doubt over that figure.

Australian company directors have
started caring about climate change

Australian company directors nominate climate change as the number one issue they want the government to address in the long-term, in a survey of more than 1,200 business leaders.

Mr Morrison said the ERF had delivered 193 million tonnes of emissions reductions so far and the new scheme would play a "key" role in meeting the 2030 target.
"It's been an incredibly successful program, both improving the economy and supporting the environment," he said.
"It was always our intention that we would need to extend that out to ensure we met our 2030 targets, which we will."
Meeting the 2030 commitment also relies on counting old credits, left over from the Kyoto targets, a move criticised by some experts but defended by Environment Minister Melissa Price.
"We've never actually shied away from that, we're very open and upfront about that," she told The World Today.
"This will ensure that we actually meet our targets.
"Now, you and I can argue over whether carry over should be included or not, we say that we're entitled to include carry over and we say here are our policies with our target of 26 to 28 per cent that's going to ensure that we meet that target by 2030."
The Prime Minister also announced $56 million to fast-track the development of a second Bass Strait interconnector as part of an extra $1.5 billion package of measures.
Further details are yet to be announced, but Mr Morrison said the measures would include improving energy efficiency standards and developing an electric vehicles strategy.

Senior Liberals have flagged need for new policies

Banks increase exposure to fossil fuels

Australia's major banks have been getting back into fossil fuels over the past year, casting doubt on their seriousness in tackling climate change through their investments.

The Coalition dumped its proposed National Energy Guarantee in the wake of the leadership spill that rolled former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull last year.Senior Liberals, including federal president Nick Greiner, had flagged the need for new climate change policies ahead of the election, expected to be held in May.
A number of Coalition MPs are facing challenges from high-profile independents campaigning on the need for more action on climate change, including in Mr Abbott's seat of Warringah.
Shadow Climate Change Minister Mark Butler said a Labor government would scrap the Prime Minister's policy.
"What he's doing is again making [taxpayers] foot the bill for something that big polluters should be doing," he said.
"The question really here is whether people would trust a Government that has spent five years trashing climate policy, trashing climate science, led by a Prime Minister who brought a lump of coal into the Parliament, suddenly to have had some last-minute conversion in the shadow of an election campaign to take climate change seriously."
Labor has set its own emissions reduction target of 45 per cent by 2030, a figure Mr Morrison said was "reckless" which would put a "wrecking ball" through the economy.

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When The Polls Are Tight The Coalition Pretends To Care About Climate

Fairfax - Nicky Ison*

Scott Morrison with much fanfare has announced the Coalition’s climate policy – the Climate Solution Package. Unfortunately, for those 59 per cent of Australians who according to the Lowy Institute want strong government action on climate change, this announcement is not a climate hit, but rather to borrow the words of Propellerheads and Shirley Bassey, “a joke that is rather sad and just a little bit of history repeating”.

Scott Morrison announces the government\'s climate package at a function in Melbourne. Credit: David Crosling

We’ve seen it before and we’ll see it again - every time the polls are tight and an election is coming the Coalition pretends that it cares about climate. For example, after a decade of refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol, John Howard announced an emissions trading scheme in the lead up to the 2007 election, yet when push came to shove in 2009 the Coalition rolled a leader over it. Then in 2013, Abbott announced the Emissions Reduction Fund, his alternative to the extremely effective Gillard Clean Energy Future package. Now in 2019, after toppling a Prime Minister over climate six months ago, Scott Morrison is trying the same old thing.
So what did he announce yesterday? The main commitment was the Climate Solution Fund, a plan to top up Abbott’s ERF with $200 million a year over a decade. Despite its nice name and the many times Morrison claimed that Australia will meet it’s Paris targets in a canter, the reality is that this rebranded Abbott-era policy is anything but a solution to climate change.
From its inception in 2014, the ERF has been the perfect policy for a political party that wants to say it has a climate policy, without actually taking any significant economic or policy measures to address the issue. It works by running competitive rounds to purchase voluntary climate pollution reduction, if reduction is achieved, the organisation planting trees or successfully capturing landfill gas gets paid by the government.
To date, Australian taxpayers have forked out $2.3 billion to purchase 193 million tonnes of carbon pollution reduction. This might sound like a lot, but the scheme doesn’t stand up to closer scrutiny.
A key flaw is that the abatement isn’t necessarily permanent. For example if a bushfire goes through some of the trees planted under the scheme, then taxpayers have paid for nothing.
Second, a number of the projects funded would have gone ahead anyway. Just yesterday it came to light that the ERF has paid mining company Gold Fields to build a gas power plant that the company would have built it regardless of taxpayer funds.
The ultimate proof that this policy doesn’t work, of course, is the fact that Australia’s carbon emissions have gone up year on year while this policy has been in effect, and continue to do so. Yesterday’s announcement is just more of the same. Worse, its actually less than half the funding commitment that Abbott made leading up to the 2013 election.
Apart from rebranded ERF, the government’s policy announcement consisted of a grab-bag of ideas that might not agitate the Coalition’s hard-right faction too much. These include an extra $1.5 billion for some pumped hydro and a transmission line for Tasmania, an electric vehicle strategy, and energy efficiency measures.
While these measures are needed, they are vastly inadequate. The pumped hydro and transmission infrastructure is a tiny drop in the vast ocean of policy support needed to unlock the new renewable energy zones that the Australian Energy Market Operator is planning. The energy efficiency commitments have already been made in their 2015 National Energy Productivity Plan, which hasn’t had any substantial budget commitment in the last four years.

The Morrison government's electric vehicle strategy is unlikely to unsettle its hard right faction. Credit: NG HAN GUAN

And then there is the single most obvious fact that unravels the credibility of the whole policy – there is no acknowledgement that Australia’s single biggest source of carbon pollution is coal.
This is the simplest yardstick to assessing any policy on climate change, and a big moral question going into this election. How we reduce the mining and burning of coal?
It’s a question that the Australians who are already suffering the impacts 1 degree Celsius of warming are asking; that the school kids striking for our climate are asking.
Unfortunately, this policy doesn’t have any answers.
This announcement was the federal Coalition facing up to the inescapable fact that it can’t go into the election looking like, to quote one of its own, “homophobic, anti-women, climate-change deniers”. However, in the end the world keeps revolving, the Earth keeps warming, emissions keep rising and the Coalition continues to repeat its past mistakes on climate.

*Nicky Ison is the founding director of the Community Power Agency and a research associate at the University of Technology Sydney.

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If The Coalition Has Had A Climate Epiphany, I'm Beyoncé

The Guardian - Katharine Murphy

Call the emissions reduction fund a ‘climate solutions’ fund if you like, but it doesn’t mean it is

‘Monday’s climate policy pivot reflects Morrison’s limited options.’ Photograph: David Crosling/AAP

Let’s start with the good news. Scott Morrison is talking constructively about climate change because he is intelligent enough to understand that failing to do that renders the Coalition unelectable in parts of the country, and with parts of its own base.
Compared with where we’ve been, a Liberal prime minister standing up at a podium, accepting the science of climate change and making the case for action, is progress.
We need to acknowledge it.
But this isn’t, ultimately, a test of talking points.
It has to be a test of substance, and a test of whether or not you are prepared to be a grown-up government facing up to a significant policy problem – and the truth is the Coalition has been here before.
Right on this spot.
John Howard had a very similar epiphany in 2007, delivering a speech in Melbourne within sight of an election in much the same way Morrison did on Monday. Like Morrison, Howard knew the Coalition needed to switch course on climate policy because Australians then, like now, were fretting about extreme weather and the droughts that never seemed to end.
Howard signed the Liberal party up to emissions trading during his 2007 pivot. But after he lost the election to Kevin Rudd, madness descended inside the Coalition, and raged in full public view for a decade, with that madness killing most of the optimal policy solutions for dealing with emissions reduction.

Morrison needed to put forward a serious policy program that is an implicit apology for past misdeeds. He didn't

While Morrison would like us to think that was all a bit of a bad dream, and the Coalition has actually been tremendous on climate policy despite all the compelling evidence to the contrary, the truth is the madness still defines the parameters of the policy.
Monday’s climate policy pivot reflects Morrison’s limited options. He’s unveiled a reboot of Tony Abbott’s Direct Action policy, kicking in more cash to the emissions reduction fund (although the cash only pans out at $200m a year), and giving it a new business card.
This mechanism will deliver some abatement, a significant chunk according to the government’s own projections, but the persistent question over the ERF as a mechanism (apart from why taxpayers have to pay, as opposed to big polluters) has always been whether it delivers any abatement beyond what would have happened anyway.
To put it simply: you can call the ERF a Climate Solutions Fund if you like, but giving it a reassuring sounding new name does not transform it into a mechanism designed to do the heavy lifting on emissions reduction that really needs to happen.
I could call myself Beyoncé too if I wanted to. It wouldn’t make me Beyoncé, sadly.
Other elements of the putative reboot include (probably) helping to build an interconnector between Tasmania and the mainland to maximise the potential of hydro (which is a useful development), and (presumably) pressing ahead with the Snowy 2.0 project that has been ready to go since last December. Despite not yet signing up to the expansion, the government has already built Snowy into its projections for meeting the Paris target. Nifty, huh?
There’s also something coming on electric vehicles, but there is no sign yet of an emissions standard for vehicles that would have any prospect of reducing pollution meaningfully from the transport sector. Flag that sort of thing and Nationals start rhapsodising about man’s inviolable right to his SUV.
The government is also failing to bite the bullet in other ways. We are building a big chunk of carry-over credits into our projections for meeting the Paris target, which you might be more sanguine about if there was evidence of a real emissions reduction plan, with real teeth, lined up against a bit of creative accounting to ameliorate some of the short to medium-term dislocation associated with transitioning a carbon intensive economy such as Australia’s to a low-emissions economy.
Just one more problem. You also have to line up Monday’s “climate solutions” pivot with the climate problem the government will create for itself if it proceeds to lock in more coal-fired power to Australia’s energy grid, underwritten by taxpayers, which is what the energy minister, Angus Taylor, keeps hinting he wants to do.
In order to hit reset on climate policy in a way that has some prospect of cutting through with the cohort of voters inclined to desert the government over this issue, and this issue alone, Morrison needed to do two things on Monday.
He needed to say sorry for all of that insanity. He needed to say I don’t know what came over us, but we aren’t going to do that again.
Prime ministers can do that in two ways. The first is to just say it, but that’s very hard for risk-averse politicians who equate public acts of humility with public acts of weakness.
The second is do it by implication: put forward a serious policy program that is an implicit apology for past misdeeds, and in so doing, project that you are prepared to stare down any internal brinkmanship that ensues.
That didn’t happen on Monday, and it didn’t happen on Monday because we all know what happens when the Coalition hits these particular tipping points.
Just ask Malcolm Turnbull.

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