Lethal Heating: 05/10/19

10/05/2019

Climate Change Predicted To Wipe $571 Billion Off Property Values

AFR - Tim Boyd

The property market is predicted to have $571 billion wiped from it by 2030 as a result of climate change and extreme weather events if a business as usual approach is taken, according to a new report released by the Climate Council.
Damage related loss of value would rise to $611 billion by 2050 and $770 billion by 2100 if the modelling in a report titled Compound Costs: How Climate Change is Damaging Australia's Economy comes true.

After a big storm in 2016, houses sitting on the beachfront at NSW's Collaroy washed away. Peter Rae

These figures are based on "the market correction that would be required to account for the fact that some buildings were much more expensive to insure," said a co-author of the report Dr Karl Mallon.
The report said climate change and extreme weather events would send damage costs and insurance premiums up for properties in risk-prone areas, which would cause banks to lend less to these properties as the annual costs of the borrower had risen.
In turn, high-risk property values would decrease relative to the general market.
The report modelled that by 2030 one in every 19 properties would have annual insurance premiums and self-insurance costs exceeding 1 per cent total property value per annum.

The most at-risk areas were in Queensland where flooding was common.
The extreme weather events built into the model were flooding, coastal inundation or seawater flooding, bushfires, windstorms and subsidence – the process of land moving beneath a property, mainly caused by drought in Australia.
Released on Thursday, the report analysed 15 million industrial, commercial and residential addresses around the nation.
Dr Mallon said the researchers had assumed a business as usual approach to climate change in their model. This assumed there would be no change to the trajectory of global emissions until the second half of this century, when technological advances began to curb emissions.
Dr Mallon said the report's findings should be looked at carefully by those in the financial services sector and business more broadly.
Besides insurers, who would obviously be impacted if the frequency of extreme weather events increased, Dr Mallon thought banks and mortgage lenders would have to start pricing climate change into their loans.
He said business productivity would be affected but by how much was beyond the scope of this study.
“This is not just residential dwellings, these are factories, these are offices, these are commercial premises. What we’ve looked at here is the damage but what we haven’t look at is the business disruption.”
It was time research moved beyond qualitative analysis and began putting a dollar value on the effect of climate change, Dr Mallon said.

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Government Sits On Secret Modelling Of Climate Policy Costs

Fairfax - Nicole Hasham

Controversial economist Brian Fisher has accused the Morrison government of failing to act transparently over secret modelling it commissioned on the costs of climate action, saying even he has not seen the findings despite contributing to the work.
Debate has raged during the federal election campaign over the cost of taking meaningful action on climate change, fuelled by competing modelling that predicts wildly different outcomes for the economy.

Modelling on the costs of acting on climate change has been a topic of hot debate throughout the election campaign. Credit: Andrew Taylor

Dr Fisher’s own work predicted Labor’s 45 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030 would cause gross domestic product to fall by up to $542 billion – findings trumpeted by the Coalition. The findings have been vehemently criticised by experts and Labor for relying on inaccurate assumptions and failing to consider the economic cost of failing to act on climate change.
Dr Fisher told the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that the government is withholding a second set of modelling commissioned by the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, to which he contributed earlier this year.
He said Canberra-based Cadence Economics conducted the work but he has not been informed of the findings, despite being asked to advise on modelling scenarios.

The secret modelling is understood to model the effects of climate action on the minerals and resource sectors. Credit: BHP Billiton

“It’s all been rather un-transparent … the details of what Cadence did in the end are not available to me,” he said, adding he did not know if his advice was adopted.
“[The modelling] was being done in the run-up to the election and I think the prospect was that it might be available before that … it would be interesting to read it.”
The modelling examines the cost of climate action on the resources and minerals sectors, and was delivered to the government before the election was called.
It raises the possibility that the findings favour Labor and so will not be made public, or alternatively they support the Coalition’s attacks on Labor and will be released closer to the election.
A department spokesman refused to answer questions about the modelling, including how much it cost, what the projections found and why it has not been made public despite taxpayers footing the bill.
When pressed, the spokesman said: “I’m not going to go into it, I’m just telling you what I’m telling you.”
Coalition campaign headquarters also failed to provide any details about the modelling, yet claimed it was “more evidence that the cost of emissions reductions can be measured, even though Bill Shorten refuses to … cost his own policies”.
Labor says it is not possible to accurately estimate the cost of its climate policy because the onus would be on polluting businesses to determine how their obligations are met.

Labor's climate change and energy spokesman Mark Butler questioned whether the government was using taxpayer-funded modelling to fuel a "baseless" scare campaign. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Labor’s climate change and energy spokesman Mark Butler said the unreleased modelling raised “serious questions about the possible inappropriate use of taxpayer money to fuel a baseless political scare campaign against genuine climate action”.
“The Liberals have spent more time and effort trying to discredit Labor’s climate policies than developing serious climate policies themselves,” Mr Butler said.
“The Liberals have only proven one thing – there is no floor to how low they will go to try and scare Australians from taking serious climate action.”
Australian Conservation Foundation climate change program manager Gavan McFadzean said the Coalition must be up front about whether taxpayers’ money has been spent on modelling “to politically attack other parties’ policies to cut climate pollution”.
Cadence Economics did not respond to a request for comment. In modelling released last year, the firm claimed Labor’s proposed changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax would lead to fewer jobs and less building activity.

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Key Climate Ruling Against Coal Mine Stands After Miner Declines To Appeal

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

A "game-changing" court decision blocking a coal mine in part because of its climate change impacts will stand after the project proponent dropped plans to appeal against the verdict.
Gloucester Resources had until Wednesday to oppose the rejection by the NSW Land and Environment Court in February of its proposed Rocky Hill coal mine near the town of Gloucester on the state's Mid North Coast.

A win is a win - finally: Gloucester residents opposed to the nearby Rocky Hill coal project proposal may finally get some peace. Credit: Janie Barrett

In a short statement, the company said it had "decided not to pursue its appeal options" through the Court of Appeal.
"This means the Rocky Hill Coal Mine will not proceed," it said, adding the company would carry out "further assessment of its current exploration licences in the area".
Groundswell Gloucester - the group that had earlier fought off AGL's 330-well coal seam project near the town - welcomed the decision not to appeal.
"This is great news for a small town that has had this mine proposal hanging over its head for [more than] 10 years," John Watts, a spokesman for the group, said. "It was always an ill-considered idea, which should have been rejected years ago."
David Morris, head of the Environmental Defenders Office of NSW, said the court's rejection of the mine partly on the basis of its contribution to global warming had created reverberations "felt across this country and around the world". The lack of an appeal now removed "any doubt of its legal validity".
"This is the leading case for how decision-makers should take into consideration a project's impact on climate change, and on the social health and wellbeing and cultural health of a community," he said.
The NSW government should now act to codify the decision to ensure other fossil-fuel projects in the state have to include similar assessments of the warming impacts in the planning approval process, Mr Morris said.
Environmental group Lock the Gate said the government should take "this historic opportunity" to consider two other new NSW coal mines - United Wambo and Bylong - now under consideration by the Independent Planning Commission "in a new light".

New NSW Energy and Environment Minister Matt Kean tells Parliament on Wednesday that he plans to take climate change seriously. Credit: Nick Moir

"The Bylong project has a lot in common with Rocky Hill because, as well as contributing to climate change, it would have unacceptable local impacts on agriculture, water and a beautiful valley rich in natural and cultural heritage," Georgina Woods, a spokeswoman for the group, said.
The Herald sought comment about the court decision from the state's new Energy and Environment Minister Matt Kean and Planning Minister Rob Stokes.
Climate litigation is dubbed as a "new weapon" to force companies and countries to take greenhouse gas emissions into account, with more than 1000 cases before various courts around the world.

Climate stance shifting
The NSW Coalition government under Premier Gladys Berejiklian has indicated it will give greater attention to climate and other environmental issues after it was re-elected last month.
On Wednesday, Mr Kean used the first question time of the new Parliament to describe the new global report out this week into accelerating species extinction as "an important wake-up call for all of us".
Mr Kean added that "there is no greater risk to our environment than climate change", and a new climate department would ensure "NSW is playing its part in reaching the Paris goal" of limiting warming to less than 2 degrees of pre-industrial levels.
Julie Lyford, chairwoman of Groundswell Gloucester, said "affected residents are absolutely delighted that they can now get on with their lives. The uncertainty and anxious waiting is over.
"With climate change threatening everyone and everything on the planet, we owe it to this and future generations to step away from fossil fuels, embrace renewables and work towards just transitions," she said.

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