Heat, rainfall, droughts, cyclones and bushfires are all on the rise, Climate Council warns
Australia’s summer sports obsession could face interruptions as extreme weather events such as Tasmania’s bushfires increase.
Photograph: Luke Tscharke/Climate Council
Extreme weather events linked to climate change have the potential to
disrupt Australia’s summer sports obsession at elite and grassroots
level, the Climate Council warns.
Its latest report –Weather Gone Wild, released on
Wednesday – says climate change is increasing the frequency and severity
of events such as extreme heat, intense rainfall, droughts, tropical
cyclones and bushfires.
It comes amid unprecedented flooding in north Queensland and out of control bushfires in Tasmania.
The Riveaux Road fire burning near the Cracroft River in Tasmania on Saturday. Photograph: Luke Tscharke/Climate Council
Australia had its third warmest year on record in 2018 and the mean temperature was up by 1.14C, the report said.
The report noted that parts of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria
and eastern South Australia were affected by drought and annual rainfall
was 11% below average.
You can’t really work safely outside if it’s 47C Lesley Hughes, Climate Council
Data from the Bureau of Meteorology Annual Climate Statement 2018. Photograph: Climate Council
“I do think that as climate change continues to bite over the next
few decades, sporting bodies are going to have to look at changing the
timing of events that are commonly held in summer,” Hughes said.
“It’s not just the big international events, it’s kids’ sporting events as well.”
Temperature records were broken around the globe in 2018. January was
New Zealand’s hottest month on record, and 3.1C above the national
average from 1981-2010. Europe had its hottest April in 2018 since
records began in 1910. The US experienced its hottest May since
record-keeping began in 1895 but more recently has been in the grip of the polar vortex.
The number of natural catastrophes worldwide has been rising since the 1980s.
Photograph: Climate Council/ Munich RE 2018
The Macquarie University professor said that during the last drought
community ovals and sports grounds became so dry they were deemed too
dangerous for children to play on.
The Australian Open brought in a new extreme heat policy in 2019 following
complaints in previous years about player welfare. Matches have been
called off and the roof has been closed because of high temperatures.
Hughes said Australians would have to make dramatic changes to work
life too which impacted on productivity. “You can’t really work safely
outside if it’s 47C,” she said.
State governments are also going to have to ramp up resources to
firefighting services. Previously Australia used to share firefighting
equipment with places like California because the seasons were different
but now they are overlapping.
“The really expensive water-dumping aircraft are leased in the
northern hemisphere during one season and the southern hemisphere during
the other season,” Hughes said. “Now there’s quite a lot of competition
to get those aircraft.”
The window for hazard reduction in cooler months is getting smaller, Hughes said.
She said some rainforests in Queensland that had never burnt before
are drying out and being ravaged by fire. “We’re seeing things we
haven’t experienced before.”
Fire damage around Eliza Plateau walking track near Lake Pedder in southern Tasmania. Photograph: Luke Tscharke/Climate Council
She pointed to Tasmania’s hottest and driest January ever: 2.5C above
average. “You’ve got massive destruction of commercial forests in
Tasmania, huge health impacts of smoke, really significant stress on
communities,” she said.
On Tuesday the prime minister, Scott Morrison, toured flood-ravaged Townsville but declined to say much about climate change.
“I’m not engaging in broader policy debates today. I’m engaging in
the needs of people here on the ground, people in evacuation centres,”
he said.
Hughes said politicians needed to wake up. “It’s a question of facing
the facts, accepting the science and actually forming a climate
policy,” Hughes said.
The Khumbu Glacier near Mount Everest in Nepal is one of the longest in the world. Credit Prakash Mathema/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
NEW DELHI —
Rising temperatures in the Himalayas, home to most of the world’s
tallest mountains, will melt at least one-third of the region’s glaciers
by the end of the century even if the world’s most ambitious climate
change targets are met, according to a report released Monday.
If
those goals are not achieved, and global warming and greenhouse gas
emissions continue at their current rates, the Himalayas could lose
two-thirds of its glaciers by 2100, according to the report, the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment.
Under
those more dire circumstances, the Himalayas could heat up by 8 degrees
Fahrenheit (4.4 degrees Celsius) by century’s end, bringing radical
disruptions to food and water supplies, and mass population
displacement.
Glaciers in the Hindu
Kush Himalayan Region, which spans over 2,000 miles of Asia, provide
water resources to around a quarter of the world’s population.
“This
is a climate crisis you have not heard of,” said Philippus Wester, a
lead author of the report. “Impacts on people in the region, already one
of the world’s most fragile and hazard-prone mountain regions, will
range from worsened air pollution to an increase in extreme weather
events.”
One of the most complete
studies on mountain warming, the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment was put
together over five years by 210 authors. The report includes input from
more than 350 researchers and policymakers from 22 countries.
In October, a landmark report
from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change found that
if greenhouse gas emissions continued at the current rate, the
atmosphere would warm by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees
Celsius) above preindustrial levels by 2040.
Avoiding
further damage from this rise would require transforming the world
economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic
precedent,” the report said.
In the
Himalayas, warming under this scenario would probably be even higher, at
3.8 degrees Fahrenheit (2.1 degrees Celsius), the Hindu Kush Himalaya
Assessment found. Across the world, glacier volumes are projected to
decline up to 90 percent this century from decreased snowfall, increased
snowline elevations and longer melt seasons.
The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment touches on the phenomenon of elevation-dependent warming.
Though it is well known that temperature changes due to increased
levels of greenhouse gases are amplified at higher latitudes, like in
the Arctic, there is growing evidence that warming rates are also
greater at higher elevations.
“Mountain
people are really getting hit hard,” said David Molden, the director
general of the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development,
the research center near Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, that led the
study. “We have to do something now.”
Around South Asia, the impact of climate change has already intensified. Brutal heat waves are becoming unbearable, making people sicker and poorer, and diminishing the living standards of 800 million people.
Access
to water is also a concern. Last spring, shortages were so severe in
the Indian city of Shimla, in the Himalayas, that some residents asked tourists to stop visiting so that they would have enough water for themselves.
A government report released last year found that India was experiencing the worst water crisis in its history.
About half of India’s population, around 600 million people, faced
extreme water scarcities, the report found, with 200,000 people dying
each year from inadequate access to safe water.
By 2030, the country’s demand for water is likely to be twice the available supply.
In
neighboring Nepal, rising temperatures have already uprooted people.
Snow cover is shrinking in mountain villages, and rain patterns are less
predictable. Fertile land once used for growing vegetables has become
barren.
“Water sources have dried
up,” said Pasang Tshering Gurung, a farmer from the village of Samjong,
which is about 13,000 feet above sea level.
A few years ago, all 18 families in Samjong moved to a village around 1,000 feet lower after their crops repeatedly failed.
But
Mr. Gurung and his neighbors are still worried. Landslides linked to
increased flooding continue to thunder down hillsides. The government
has offered limited support for resettlement, he said.
And with little money to spare, Mr. Gurung is not sure where he would go next.
“We will be landless refugees,” he said. “How can we survive in the Himalayas without water?”
*Kai Schultz reported from New Delhi, and *Bhadra Sharma from Kathmandu, Nepal.
The nation’s pre-eminent science agency has cast doubt on the
environmental benefits claimed under the Morrison government’s main
climate policy, raising concerns Australia is overstating its
contribution to the fight against global warming.
Despite concerns
over the scheme, known as the emissions reduction fund, there is
speculation it will receive a federal budget cash injection of up to $1
billion over three years as the government seeks to neutralise claims it
is failing to address dangerous climate change.
The
emissions reduction fund was introduced by the Abbott government in
2014 after it abolished Labor’s so-called carbon tax. The measure
remains the flagship climate policy under Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
The CSIRO and the NSW Department of
Primary Industries raised concern that the Emissions Reduction Fund may
be claiming carbon abatement that would have occurred anyway.
The $2.55 billion fund, part of the government’s Direct Action plan,
pays businesses, landowners and others to carry out projects that reduce
carbon emissions, or capture and store carbon that already exists in
the atmosphere. About $226 million remains in the fund.
About half the carbon abatement pledged
under the fund – or 95 million tonnes - relates to farming projects
that use one of two native revegetation methods.
The projects are
mostly on grazing land in north-west NSW and south-west Queensland. They
involve changes to farming practices such as limiting cattle grazing
and managing feral animals, to allow native plants to regrow. The plants
then draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it as carbon.
Under the scheme, the amount of carbon sequestered through revegetation
projects must be additional to what would have occurred otherwise.
A government-appointed expert committee has been examining the performance of the revegetation methods.
In
a joint submission to the committee, the CSIRO and the NSW Department
of Primary Industries cast doubt on whether all emission reduction
claimed under the methods was genuine.
The submission said the
growth of shrubs onto grassland, which indicates revegetation, may not
be attributable to funded projects but to other factors, such as
increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or the
changing climate.
It
said recent evidence of revegetation in arid and semi-arid regions of
Australia "raises questions over whether the … [emissions reduction
fund] projects result in entirely additional carbon abatement".
The
agencies also noted substantial "uncertainty" in the carbon accounting
model used to measure abatement under the two methods, which also lacked
"underpinning research" to support its predictions.
Most projects using the methods under review involve regrowing native forest on grazing land. Credit: Louise Kennerley
Under
the scheme, estimates of abatement should be conservative. However the
CSIRO and the department expressed "particular concern" over a reliance
on "subjective assessments by project proponents" of factors such as the
effect of grazing on carbon stocks.
The National Farmers
Federation submission said drought conditions may limit vegetation
growth, potentially meaning the actual carbon sequestered by farming
projects "does not meet the estimates" and so proponents are denied
payment under the scheme. The federation also said vegetation set aside
for carbon storage may be needed as animal fodder during drought.
However
carbon farming project developers Climate Friendly said in a submission
that its vegetation method met standards designed to ensure that carbon
offsets were genuine. It said farming activities such as altered
grazing management were "a significant departure from business-as-usual
and [are] resulting in transformational changes".
Conservative MP Craig Kelly, right, pictured with former prime minister Tony Abbott, says the emissions reduction fund should not be topped up. Credit: AAP
In a statement, the Department of the
Environment and Energy said the emissions reduction assurance committee,
which was reviewing the methods, had considered issues raised in the
submissions.
It
said claims for carbon credits were "subject to an assessment process
and robust auditing regime overseen by the Clean Energy Regulator".
Labor’s
climate change spokesman Mark Butler said his party was “concerned by
any evidence the ERF has not led to the abatement the government
claims”.
“We
have long said the ERF is an ineffective policy, with taxpayers paying
for abatement that will have happened in any event without taxpayer
support. This is just another example of the government’s inability to
deliver real and effective climate policies,” he said.
Moderate
Liberal MPs fearful of an electoral backlash over climate inaction have
reportedly been pushing for the emissions reduction fund to be topped
up, and Environment Minister Melissa Price has signalled its scope could
be widened to include threatened species management.
The
Coalition’s far right has exerted a heavy influence over the
government’s climate policies this term, including deposing former prime
minister Malcolm Turnbull over the National Energy Guarantee.
Conservative MP Craig Kelly said while the emissions reduction fund had "achieved its objectives" it should now be phased out.
"We
get a lot of [emissions] reduction through technological improvements
and I think that is the best way to go, rather than to use this fund,"
he said.
"I would be reluctant [to re-finance it], there are so many other things we need to spend money on."
Decorated Australian firefighter Greg Mullins says climate change is
contributing to bushfires so horrendous that homes and lives cannot be
protected, and the federal government will not acknowledge the link
because it has failed on emissions reduction policy.
The
extraordinary comments by Mr Mullins, a former NSW Fire and Rescue
Commissioner, coincides with the Tuesday launch of the group Bushfire
Survivors for Climate Action, which will lobby the major parties to
drastically reduce fossil fuel use and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Greg Mullins says both major parties have failed to take steps to arrest Australia's contribution to climate change. Credit: Kate Geraghty
Prime
Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten both visited
Tasmania on Monday, where catastrophic bushfires had reportedly
destroyed eight homes and burnt 190,000 hectares of land as of Monday
afternoon. Their visit came on the 10th anniversary of the Victorian
Black Saturday bushfires.
The major parties’ pledges on climate
change are expected to be a frontline issue at the upcoming federal
election, as the public reels from record-high summer temperatures,
extreme weather and a long, unforgiving bushfire season.
Greg Mullins as NSW Fire and Rescue Commissioner.
Fires are a natural phenomenon in the
Australian bush, but experts say climate change effects such as
heatwaves and changed rainfall patterns mean bushfires are becoming more
frequent and extreme.
Mr Mullins said fire seasons "are longer, more severe, and we are getting fires that are much harder to put out".
"What
that means … is there is simply not enough firefighters and fire trucks
to do the job, to protect every structure and protect people’s lives,"
he said.
"It's extremely inconvenient for any government that does
not have a cogent answer for what they’ll do about climate change, to
see the effects of climate change putting more and more people and homes
at risk."
Mr
Mullins has 50 years of fire fighting experience, including 39 years
with Fire and Rescue NSW and as a volunteer in his youth and in
retirement. He has been awarded the prestigious Australian Fire Service
Medal and is an officer of the Order of Australia. He is a member of the
Climate Council and welcomed the formation of Bushfire Survivors for
Climate Action.
Mr Mullins sought to raise the climate change
alarm in public comments in 2006 following fires in the Blue Mountains,
but says the then-NSW Labor government told him to "pull your head in".
“They didn’t want public servants coming out saying [the climate change driver] was pretty obvious to us,” he said.
"I
feel quite passionately that the word needs to get out about how much
the bushfire threat has worsened. I’ve watched it change, and I’ve
watched our politicians sit on their hands, from both major parties. I
don’t think either of them really have answers or are doing enough.”
NSW Labor has been contacted for comment.
Mr
Mullins said he was "astounded" that Prime Minister Scott Morrison on
Monday addressed the media at Huonville in Tasmania, the epicentre of
the state's bushfire crisis, but did not mention addressing climate
change.
"He seems like an intelligent person, he can read ... it’s
a very easy correlation and people in the [fire fighting] business know
the links," he said.
The Gell River bushfire in Tasmania's south-west, which has burned through about 18,000 hectares. Credit: AAP
Mr Mullins said for the government, climate change was "a policy-free zone so he’s got no answers. So obviously you’d avoid it."
Mr
Morrison on Monday described as “pretty offensive” a tweet by federal
Greens senator Nick McKim, which claimed Tasmania’s fires were “made
more dangerous by [Mr Morrison’s] love affair with coal”.
Mr Morrison said many bushland areas in
the state were unaffected by fire, and Tasmania remained “a wonderful
place to come and visit”.
“[The government] will be working
closely with the state government to ensure the rehabilitation and the
recovery from these fires, both from a tourism-business point of view
and more broadly,” he said.
In
response to Mr Mullins' remarks, a spokesman for Environment Minister
Melissa Price said the government was “contributing to global efforts to
reduce emissions”.
Speaking in Tasmania, Mr Shorten said while
climate change was not responsible for every natural disaster “even the
most extreme climate deniers are probably at the point of acknowledging
that we are having more and more extreme weather events”.
“New
weather records are being set and the economic cost is growing … I
think it is legitimate to talk about climate change,” he said, calling
on the government to act.
A Labor government would reduce carbon
emissions by 45 per cent by 2030, based on 2005 levels. The government
has pledged to reduce emissions by 26 per cent over the same period,
however, the OECD says Australia will miss that target under current
policy settings.
GetUp! and the Climate Media Centre are supporting the Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action group.
Black
Saturday survivor Ali Griffin lost her home near Yarra Glen during the
tragedy, and said: “I don’t want this to happen to anyone else”.
“We know the threat of devastating bushfires is getting worse every year we keep burning coal and heating our planet,” she said.
“Enough
is enough, we are sick of the lack of progress on this issue - any
politician without a serious plan to tackle climate damage is not fit to
hold office.”
Richard Flanagan is an Australian novelist, "considered by many to be the finest Australian novelist of his generation", according to The Economist. Each of his novels has attracted major praise and received numerous awards and honours. He also has written and directed feature films.
As
I write this, fire is 500 metres from the largest King Billy pine
forest in the world on Mt Bobs, an ancient forest that dates back to the
last Ice Age and has trees over 1,000 years old.
Fire has broached the
boundaries of Mt Field national park with its glorious alpine
vegetation, unlike anything on the planet.
Fire laps at the edges of
Federation Peak, Australia’s grandest mountain, and around the base of
Mt Anne with its exquisite rainforest and alpine gardens. Fire laps at
the border of the Walls of Jerusalem national park with its labyrinthine
landscapes of tarns and iconic stands of ancient pencil pine and its
beautiful alpine landscape, ecosystems described by their most eminent
scholar, the ecologist Prof Jamie Kirkpatrick, as “like the vision of a
Japanese garden made more complex, and developed in paradise, in amongst
this gothic scenery”.
“You have plants that look like rocks – green rocks – and these
plants have different colours in complicated mosaics: red-green,
blue-green, yellow-green, all together. It’s an overwhelming sensual
experience really.”
Five years ago I was contacted by a stranger, Prof Peter Davies, an
eminent water scientist. He wanted to meet because he had news he
thought would interest me. The night we met Davies told me that the
south-west of Tasmania
– the island’s vast, uninhabited and globally unique wildland, the
heart of its world heritage area – was dying. The iconic habitats of
rainforest, button grass plains, and heathlands had begun to vanish
because of climate change.
I was shocked. I had understood that climate change’s effects on
Tasmania would be significant but not disastrous; the changes mitigated
by Tasmania being surrounded by seas that were not heating as quickly as
others: the island’s west would get wetter, the east a little warmer
and drier, but compared to much of the world it didn’t seem
catastrophic.
But
it wasn’t so. Tasmania’s sea waters were warming at two to three times
the global rate. Davies’ work, with that of other scientists, was
revealing the warming and drying of Tasmania’s west and highlands, and
the growing impact this was having. The highland lakes of Tasmania
would, for example, in the next 70 to 100 years see between a 10% and
20% drop in rainfall, coupled to a 20% to 30% increase in evaporation.
By the end of this century a significant proportion of these lakes and
wetlands will cease to exist or be largely dried out much of the year.
Then there was the startlingly new phenomenon of widespread dry
lightning storms. Almost unknown in Tasmania until this century they had
increased exponentially since 2000, leading to a greatly increased rate
of fire in a rapidly drying south-west. Compounding all this, winds
were also growing in duration, further drying the environment and
fuelling the fires’ spread and ferocity.
Such a future would see these fires destroy Tasmania’s globally
unique rainforests and mesmerising alpine heathlands. Unlike mainland
eucalyptus forest these ecosystems do not regenerate after fire: they
would vanish forever. Tasmania’s world heritage area was our Great
Barrier Reef, and, like the Great Barrier Reef, it seemed doomed by
climate change.
Later Davies took me on a research trip into a remote part of
the south-west to show me the deeply upsetting sight of an area that
was once peatland and forest and was now, after repeated burning, wet
gravel. The news was hard to comprehend – the enemies of Tasmania’s wild
lands had always had local addresses: the Hydro Electricity Commission,
Gunns, various tourism ventures. They could be named and they could be
fought, and, in some cases, beaten.
But
the new danger was not here. It was in the sky, it was carbon, and
every year there was more of it. The name of the crime was climate
change.
Six weeks ago, the future that Davies and others had been predicting
arrived in Tasmania. Lightning strikes ignited what would become known
as the Gell River fire in the island’s south-west. In later weeks more
lightning strikes led to more fires, every major one of which is still
burning.
Tasmania subsequently recorded its driest January on record, with
maximum temperatures an astonishing 3.22C above the long-term average
for the month. Fuel loads were, according to the Tasmanian Fire Service,
20% to 30% drier than average. In such an unprecedented environment the
fires were unstoppable.
Smoke billows from a bushfire south of Huonville in southern Tasmania last week. Photograph: Rob Blakers/AAP
Today Tasmania is burning. Its fires are so large that a firefighting
team was reportedly called out in New Zealand to investigate a heavy
smoke haze that turned out to have drifted across 2,500km of ocean from
the Tasmanian fires. Firefighters are confronted with 1,629km of fire
front, with fires having consumed 190,000 hectares, or 3% of Tasmania’s
land, with authorities warning there is no sign of the fires abating for
several weeks, and the potential for catastrophic consequences still a
distinct possibility.
To date, Tasmania has had the extraordinary luck this summer to not
have had the gale-force winds that characterised the tragic 1967 fires,
in which 62 people perished within a few hours. But luck is only that,
and one day soon, this summer or next, or the one after, that fatal day
will dawn, and the catastrophe that will result will dwarf all previous
Tasmanian fires in its fatal tragedy because everything else has
changed, and all for the worse.
The Tasmanian fires have attracted little national media attention
because there has been as yet, thankfully, no loss of life and only a
handful of homes burnt. And yet these fires signal a terrifying new
reality, as disturbing and ultimately almost certainly as tragic as the
coral reef bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.
What
has become clear is that another global treasure in the form of
Tasmania’s ancient Gondwanaland remnant forest and its woodland alpine
heathlands are at profound and immediate risk because of climate change.
Heroic efforts have been made by remote area firefighters to preserve
some of these rare ecosystems. But when communities in the Huon came
under threat most of these resources were diverted to that front. Such
resources don’t come cheap: a single drop by a Hercules C-130 water
bomber is understood to cost $75,000.
And so, without a far greater investment of money in the coming
years, scientists believe these global treasures are doomed to
destruction. This week or next year or the next, the certainty is that
without extraordinary effort, they will burn and be gone forever.
At the same time Tasmanians find themselves living in a frightening
new world where summer is no longer a time of joy, but a period of
smog-drenched dread that goes on week after week, and it seems
inevitable, month after month. Whole communities have been evacuated and
are living in evacuation centres or bunking down with friends and
families. Those that remain live in a fug of sleeplessness and fear,
never knowing when the next ember attack will occur or a nearby fire
will break containment lines, a gut-clutching terror of wind, smoke and
heat. Volunteer firefighters find themselves no longer fighting fires
for a week but for a season. Government is confronted with the
extraordinary cost of fighting fires of this size and scale for months.
This would seem to be the new normal. According to Prof David Bowman,
professor of pyrogeography at the University of Tasmania, henceforth
Tasmanians “must think about fire as part of daily life”.
Two years ago the then treasurer Scott Morrison
picked up a large lump of coal. Perhaps he thought it was a great joke
for Australia at the expense of a few weird outliers like the Greens and
the global scientific community. Or perhaps Morrison wasn’t really
thinking anything. Perhaps the greatest error of journalists is thinking
people at the centre are more than they seem. The problem with people
like Morrison, the true terror, is that they may be so much less.
Scott Morrison hands Barnaby Joyce a lump of coal during Question Time in parliament. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
“This is coal,” Morrison began babbling. “Don’t be afraid don’t be scared won’t hurt you won’t hurt you.”
Almost stuttering in his excitement, missing pronouns, he was
gibbering without punctuation. If the style was grammatically Joycean,
the effect, like his previous masterpiece, “Where the bloody hell are
you?”, was memorable.
He waved the piece of coal around like it was the sacred Host itself,
he swung it high and he brought it so low that for a moment it was as
if a wildly guffawing Barnaby Joyce seated next to him might lick it.
How they laughed! The ranks of the Liberal party assembled around and behind, how they all laughed and laughed that day.
Those faces contorted in weird mirth are the grotesque masks of a
great and historic crime, deriding not just their political opponents
but mocking the future with that pure contempt of power, daring us to
remember beyond the next news cycle, to care beyond the next confected
outrage, to see past the next lie. It is the image of our age: power
laughing at us.
Scott Morrison’s proudest boast is that when the barbarians were at
the gate, he stopped them. But now the truth is clear: the barbarians
were never at the gate. They were always here, in the palace, in power,
and they were blinding us with their lie that the enemies who would
destroy our world were the wretched and powerless who sought asylum
here. And all along our real enemy was them: those who held up lumps of
coal in front of their throne, and laughed and laughed and gloated won’t hurt you won’t hurt you.
But it is.
What has become clear over these last four weeks across this vast,
beautiful land of Australia is that a way of life is on the edge of
vanishing. Australian summers, once a time of innocent pleasure, now are
to be feared, to be anticipated not with joy but with dread, a time of
discomfort, distress and, for some, fear that lasts not a day or a night
but weeks and months. Power grids collapse, dying rivers vomit huge
fish kills, while in the north, in Townsville, there are unprecedented
floods, and in the south heat so extreme it pushes at the very edge of
liveability has become everyday.
And the future in which the people of Tasmania now find themselves,
in the evacuation centres, camped in friends’ and family homes, fighting
fires day after week after month, isn’t just frightening. It’s
terrifying. While Morrison, now the prime minister, rushes around the
country trying to scare the people about franking credits, he seems
blithely unaware that the people are already scared – about climate
change. Climate change
isn’t just happening. It’s happening far quicker than has been
predicted. Each careful scientific prediction is rapidly overtaken by
the horror of profound natural changes that seem to be accelerating,
with old predictions routinely outdone by the worsening reality –
hotter, colder, wetter, drier, windier, wilder, and ever more
destructive.
When Scott Morrison visited Tasmania yesterday he wasn’t photographed
holding a lump of coal up in Geeveston. In the evacuation centre at
Huonville. In the sacred King Billy pine groves of Mt Bobs or the
exquisite cushion plant gardens of the Walls of Jerusalem. I doubt he
had the folly to tell people don’t be scared. I am sure that he looked
concerned and perhaps occasionally he smiled, the smile of the weak man,
the smile of all the empty men.
And tomorrow there will be another welcome photo opportunity at
another unprecedented “natural” disaster, another fire, another flood.
And when he retires back into his prime ministerial limo I wonder if he
laughs. He should. Laugh at us all, Scott Morrison, you and the others
who sit with you, grinning fools at the entrance to hell. Laugh and
laugh as the ash falls soft as silent despair.
Mass fish deaths in the Darling River highlight the issue of climate risk.
GRAEME MCCRABB/AAP
The tragic recent events on the Darling River, and the political
and policy furore around them, have again highlighted the severe
financial and environmental consequences of mismanaging climate risks.
The Murray-Darling Royal Commission demonstrates how closely boards of
public sector corporate bodies can be scrutinised for their management
of these risks.
Public authorities must follow private companies and factor climate
risk into their board decision-making. Royal Commissioner Brett Walker
has delivered a damning indictment of the Murray Darling Basin
Authority’s management of climate-related risks. His report
argues that the authority’s senior management and board were
“negligent” and fell short of acting with “reasonable care, skill and
diligence”. For its part, the authority “rejects the assertion” that it “acted improperly or unlawfully in any way”.
The Royal Commission has also drawn attention to the potentially
significant legal and reputational consequences for directors and
organisations whose climate risk management is deemed to have fallen
short of a rising bar.
It’s the public sector’s turn
Until recently, scrutiny of how effectively large and influential
organisations are responding to climate risks has focused mostly on the
private sector.
In Australia it is widely acknowledged among legal experts
that private company directors’ duty of “due care and diligence”
requires them to consider foreseeable climate risks that intersect with
the interests of the company. Indeed, Australia’s companies regulator,
ASIC, has called for directors to take a “probative and proactive” approach to these risks.
The recent focus on management of the Murray-Darling Basin again
highlights the crucial role public sector corporations (or “public
authorities” as we call them) also play in our overall responses to
climate change – and the consequences when things go wrong.
Australia’s economy, once dominated by publicly owned enterprises,
was reshaped by waves of privatisations in the late 20th century.
However, hundreds of public authorities continue to play an important
role in our economy. They build and maintain infrastructure, generate
energy, oversee superannuation portfolios, provide insurance and manage
water resources, among many other activities.
This means that, like their counterparts in the private sector, many
face risks associated with climate change. Take Melbourne Water, for
instance, a statutory water corporation established to manage the city’s
water supply. It will have to contend with increasingly hot summers and
reduced rainfall (a physical risk), and also with the risk that
government policy in the future might impose stricter conditions on how
water is used (a transition risk).
What duties do public authorities owe?
Our new research
from the Centre for Policy Development, shows that, at the Commonwealth
and Victorian level (and likely in other Australian jurisdictions), the
main laws governing officials in public authorities are likely to
create similar obligations to those imposed on private company
directors.
For instance, a 2013 federal act
requires public authority board members to carry out their duties with
the degree of “due care and diligence” that a reasonable person would
exercise if they were a Commonwealth official in that board position.
The concept of a “reasonable person” is crucial. There is
ever-increasing certainty about the human contribution to climate
change. New tools and models have been created to measure the impact of
climate change on the economy. Climate risks are therefore reasonably
foreseeable if you are acting carefully and diligently, and thus public
authority directors should consider these risks.
The obligations of public authority directors may, in some cases, go
beyond what is required of private company directors. The same act
mentioned above requires Commonwealth officials to promote best practice
in the way they carry out their duties. While there is still wide
divergence in how private companies manage climate change,
best practice in leading corporations is moving towards more systematic
analysis and disclosure of these risks. Accordingly, a “best practice”
obligation places an even higher onus on public sector directors to
manage climate risk.
The specific legislation that governs certain public authorities may
introduce different and more onerous requirements. For instance, the
Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s governing legislation, the Water Act
2007, imposes a number of additional conditions on the authority. This
includes the extent to which the minister can influence board
decision-making.
Nonetheless, our laws set out a widely applicable standard for public authority directors.
Approaches to better manage public authority climate risks
While some public authorities are already carefully considering how
physical and transition climate risks affect their work, our research
suggests that standards vary widely.
As with the private sector, a combination of clear expectations for
better climate risk management, greater scrutiny and more investment in
climate-related capabilities and risk-management frameworks can all play
a role in raising the bar. Our research highlights four steps that
governments should consider:
creating a whole-of-government toolkit and implementation
strategy for training and supporting directors to account for
climate-risk in decision-making
using existing public authority accountability mechanisms – such
as the public sector commissioner or auditor general’s office – to more
closely scrutinise the management of climate-related financial risks
issuing formal ministerial statements of expectations to clarify
how public authorities and their directors should manage climate-related
risks and policy priorities
making legislative or regulatory changes to ensure consistent
consideration, management and disclosure of climate risk by public
sector decision-makers.
Measures such as these would set clear expectations for more
consistent, sophisticated responses to climate risks by public
authorities. However, even without any changes, it should be clear that
public authority directors have legal duties to consider climate risks –
and that these duties must be taken seriously even when doing so is
complicated, controversial or politically sensitive.
