Insurers Urge Morrison To Take On Climate Action

AFR - James Fernyhough

General insurers have lost no time in calling on the re-elected Morrison government to put a "greater focus" on natural disaster mitigation following the Coalition's shock win in Saturday's federal election.
In a statement congratulating Prime Minister Scott Morrison for his win, Insurance Council of Australia chief executive Rob Whelan listed among the industry's priorities to "protect at-risk communities from natural disasters" and "tackle climate change".
"The ICA hopes a greater focus will be placed on investing in nation-building infrastructure that encourages economic sustainability and growth in regions exposed to natural disasters, in the form of permanent mitigation and other resilience programs," Mr Whelan said.
He also called for the "removal of inefficient and unfair state taxes and levies on insurance products".
Insurers around the world have seen a sharp rise in natural catastrophe claims in recent years, which the industry has universally linked to the climate crisis.
This has prompted a global push by the industry for governments and regulators to take the issue seriously.
Australia's biggest insurers IAG, Suncorp and QBE have repeatedly flagged the risks natural catastrophes pose to their businesses, while the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, under the leadership of the head of insurance Geoff Summerhayes, has taken an increasingly stronger position on the financial risks of climate change.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Reserve Bank of Australia have also named climate change as a major risk.
Labor was widely expected to win Saturday's election on a platform that included much more ambitious plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Labor was targeting 45 per cent emissions reductions on 2005 levels by 2030, while the Coalition's target is 26 to 28 per cent.
The Coalition's means of achieving that reduction is a $3.5 billion fund to spend on carbon abatement projects, such as planting trees.
Following the collapse of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull's ill-fated national energy guarantee (NEG), the government's climate policy does not include any attempt to cap businesses' emissions, or incentivise low-emissions activities.
Already a return of the NEG is being mooted, with business leaders reportedly favouring it, and former foreign minister Julia Bishop calling on her ex-colleagues to embrace the policy, which had broadly bipartisan support before the right wing of the Liberal Party, led by Tony Abbott, derailed it.
ICA spokesman Campbell Fuller said that while climate change was likely increasing natural disasters, the insurance industry's main focus was on resilience measures such as flood levies, rather than policies that tackle the root cause of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions.
"The ICA does not believe it is advisable to take a political position on climate change. It seeks to encourage all governments to help communities adapt to the challenges posed by climate change,” Mr Fuller said.
“Permanent mitigation shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought. It should be treated as nation-building infrastructure, because properly designed and maintained mitigation helps ensure that communities can remain economically sustainable.
"In some parts of the country, it can help the economy thrive. So rather than having to be rebuilt every few years through taxpayer funds and insurance, our argument is to reduce the impacts or likelihood of the impact of floods."
He said only 3 to 5 per cent of disaster funding went towards mitigation, with the vast majority going towards recovery.
He called on the government to adopt the Productivity Commission's recommendation that the federal government spend $200 million a year on resilience projects, with state and local governments contributing a further $200 million.
Sixteen of the 20 most flood-prone areas of Australia are in Queensland - the state with the most pronounced swings towards the Coalition in Saturday's election. The rest are in NSW.
Earlier this month, the ICA announced it was developing a climate change strategy.
"The ICA’s goal is to play a thought-leadership role in the transition of our nation to a low-carbon economy by sending a price signal about unacceptable risks and working with governments to help reduce risks through improving the built environment," ICA president Richard Enthoven said.
"This strategy will also assist our member companies to manage the increasing risks to their businesses associated with climate change."

Links

• Climate Change Predicted To Wipe $571 Billion Off Property Values
• Australian Insurer QBE To Exit Thermal Coal Over Climate Change
• Climate Change Could Make Insurance Too Expensive For Most People – Report 
• Australian Insurers Say 'Act Now' On Climate Change
• Business, Insurers At Odds With Coalition's 'Problematic' Climate Policy
• Climate Change-Induced Disasters Cost Nations At Least $100 Billion In 2018, Says Watchdog
• Climate Change On Track To Make World 'Uninsurable': IAG
• Insurance Premiums To Rise As Extreme Weather Conditions Become More Common
• Investors With $26 Trillion In Assets Urge G7 Leaders To Act On Climate Change
• Insurers Will Be Hard-Hit By Climate Change But They're Not Investing In The Low-Carbon Economy
• Mark Carney Warns Of Climate Change Threat To Financial System
• 'Vulnerable': Climate Change Threatens Wollongong Homes, WIN Stadium

As We Struggle To Save The Planet From Climate Collapse, Let's Dance (Dramatic Glockenspiel)

The Guardian - First Dog On The Moon

Cartoon by First Dog on the Moon
LARGE IMAGE

Links

• The Billionaire's Guide To Surviving Global Warming – With Ian The Climate Denialist Potato
• 'Last Year I Gave The Kids Briquettes And Everyone Yelled At Me!' Christmas With Ian 
• The Children Are Rioting In The Streets! They Are Deadly Serious And Perhaps Our Last Hope
• This Is A Call To Arms On Climate Change. And By Arms I Mean Flippers!

The Message Morrison Shouldn't Take Away From The Election

Fairfax - Ben Oquist*

If the message the government hears from the election is that the climate does not matter it will not just be energy policy that suffers. Australia’s economy and Scott Morrison’s politics will require a different interpretation.
The election result does not change the scientific imperative to reduce carbon emissions. The climate wars - the battle over effective climate action policy - are not done, but the energy wars - over Australia’s renewable energy uptake - should be.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison will forge ahead with his government's climate change policy. Hear what he has said on the topic, after his election win.

The business-led push for the now dumped National Energy Guarantee was driven by this desire. Addressing the energy trilemma – pollution, prices and reliability – requires an integrated approach that takes on all three issues. In short, if emissions policy is ignored there will not be the investor certainty that will drive new investment in the clean energy and storage that will ultimately lead to lower prices and greater reliability.
The economics of electricity production means that a new coal fired power station will never again be built in Australia without large government subsidies and future carbon price indemnity.
The market has spoken and renewables – plus storage – have beaten coal. While making its case for the "Battery of the Nation" Snowy 2.0 Project, Snowy Hydro made public its own market analysis– it is cheaper to build firmed renewables than coal. This victory is decades in the making and will take many years to shake through the system, but there is no doubt about it. While it is clear that a slim majority of Australians voted for a party without a credible policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is not clear that a majority of Australians are happy for the federal government to keep treading water on climate policy.
So what can the Coalition do? Our energy market rules were designed for an era that is ending and we need smarter rules at the wholesale and retail level so that the market can function properly. The good news for the Prime Minister is that better rules will mean lower bills, more reliability and cleaner generation.
The Australian Energy Market Commission is considering a rule change on wholesale demand response. Demand response allows consumers of electricity to get paid to use less energy at peak demands times when prices are high. Increasing grid reliability, lowering costs and cutting pollution all at once. The Australia Institute has co-sponsored a rule change and it has widespread support from business and consumers, everyone except the incumbents, who want to protect their market power.
Ministers genuinely dedicated to guaranteeing lowering electricity costs would be championing these new energy market rules that would lift the regulatory ceiling on renewables, rather than advocate for new coal-fired power stations that will not supply a single electron before 2029.
Supporting contentious coal mines might have proved to be a good way to rally conservative voters in regional Queensland, but automated mines are never going to rally local economies. The Adani coal mine will not solve regional unemployment in Queensland in the way voters have been led to believe. Even if the mine were to go ahead, the vast majority of unemployed Queenslanders will remain unemployed and it would threaten existing coal jobs at older, less automated mines.
However, there is always another election around the corner. Without serious energy and regional development policy delivered soon there is little chance that regional Australians, or anyone with an electricity bill, will be so easily convinced of the benefits of coal in three years’ time.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday. Credit: AAP

Australia’s climate wars are far from over. Arguably, they have yet to begin. While some Queensland Nationals MPs are seemingly pleased that they have helped hold back the tide of renewable energy and electric cars, the fact is Australian energy businesses are not going to invest in coal and Australia’s coal mines are not going to employ more than 0.5 per cent of Australia’s workforce.
Australia’s economy and politics will require better than what the Coalition offered at this election and a smart government will figure this out. Despite the triumphalism of some of coal’s boosters, we have proof that in part the Prime Minister already knows this. Scott Morrison spent almost no time during the election campaign spruiking coal and in fact promoted $25 billion dollars in renewable energy investment. We can be sure he will not be bringing a lump of coal into Parliament again.
And as Tony Boyd in The Australian Financial Review wrote yesterday when assessing what the election lessons were for business: "A rational energy policy that incentivises a more rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewables should not be a hard sell for Morrison given that cheaper energy would underpin increased downstream processing in the mining sector’.

*Ben Oquist is the executive director of independent think-tank the Australia Institute.

Links

• It Was Supposed To Be Australia’s Climate Change Election. What Happened?
• Australia Wilts From Climate Change. Why Can’t Its Politicians Act?
• In Coal We Trust: Australia's Voters Back PM Morrison's Faith In Fossil Fuel
• How Bob Brown and his anti-Adani convoy handed Queensland to the Coalition 
• Labor Lost The Unlosable Election – Now It's Up To Morrison To Tell Australia His Plan
• 62 Experts Urge Next Parliament to Make Climate Action a Top Priority
• Australia’s Politics May Be Changing With Its Climate
• Climate Cuts, Cover-Ups And Censorship