26/06/2019

Call To Arms: How Can Australia Avoid A Slow And Painful Decline?

The Guardian - 

Australia has been warned it risks ‘drifting into the future’ if it fails to respond to challenges in a fast-changing world
Australia is facing challenges from the rise of Asia, rapid technological change, climate change and the environment, changing demographics, declining trust in institutions and business, and strains on social cohesion. Photograph: johan63/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Australia is at a crossroads. Drift towards a future of slow decline economically and socially or, if action is taken now to address our most important challenges, create a future of greater prosperity for all, globally competitive industries and a sustainable environment.
That is the conclusion of a major report bringing together the thinking of more than 50 leaders in business, academia, NGOs and the community sector, working with the CSIRO to model alternative futures for Australia. The report is described as a “clarion call” for the nation.
The Australian National Outlook 2019, two years in the making, aims to “help kickstart a national conversation about where Australia is heading”, says its co-chair, Dr Ken Henry, the chairman of the National Australia Bank and former secretary of the Treasury department.
Participants met as a group with the nation’s leading science agency, the CSIRO, to identify the most critical long-term challenges facing Australia and what needed to change. They included senior leaders from Shell Australia, the Red Cross, McKinsey & Company, Australia Post, PwC, the Cochlear company, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, the Grattan Institute, major universities, the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists and UnitingCare Australia.
Individuals included the former New South Wales premier Nick Greiner, former chairman of the Australian competition and consumer commission Allan Fels and co-chair of the report, the CSIRO’s chairman, David Thodey.
The report concludes that while Australia has enjoyed almost three decades of economic growth, with enviable social cohesion and strong institutions, it risks “drifting into the future” if it fails to respond to challenges in a fast-changing world. Those identified are the rise of Asia, rapid technological change, climate change and the environment, changing demographics, declining trust in institutions and business and strains on social cohesion.


To deal with them and reach its potential by 2060, Australia must make “key shifts” in five areas: an industrial shift, an urban shift, an energy shift, a land shift and a culture shift.
The director of CSIRO Futures, James Deverell, led the project and said the sense of urgency came from the participants, who gathered for eight workshops, beginning with around 100 priorities for Australia before identifying the most crucial.
“There was this strong sense that we need to take action now,” Deverell said. “The group sees this as a clarion call, a call to arms for action.
Dr Ken Henry says the Australian National Outlook report aims to ‘help kickstart a national conversation about where Australia is heading’. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
“When you look at the shifts, there’s a couple of things in common. One is the need to focus on the long term, that these shifts are going to play out over a generation or more, but that doesn’t mean we can kick the can down the road and ignore them. The other one is the need for strong leadership, for bold action.”
The report references the 1980s, when strong productivity growth was driven by a consensus on economic reform supported by both major parties, big business and unions.
The report does not give specific policy recommendations but suggests the “levers” the country needs to pull to get the best outcomes. One of its strongest conclusions is that there is no tradeoff between strong economic growth and transitioning to zero-emission renewable energy, an argument that has crippled political debate in Australia for more than a decade.


In both scenarios modelled by the CSIRO – slow decline or what the report calls outlook vision – almost all electricity is generated by renewables by 2060 due to drops in the cost of renewables and the decline in the demand for fossil fuels. The global disruption in the energy market is underway, so whether the Australian government encourages new coal-fired power stations or not, renewables will be cheaper and replace them.
In Australia, most of the transition will happen between 2020 and 2040 as ageing coal-fired power plants are retired and replaced with renewables.
“We’ve seen costs come down so much in solar and wind they are now the low-cost solution,” Deverell said. “Once you hit a certain level of renewables on the grid you need to add storage to the cost, but that’s factored into our modelling and we see the cost of storage coming down over time.”
Deverell said even if Australia continued its policy uncertainty around energy and environment policy, we would still get to almost 100% renewable energy by 2060 purely because of the market. But the warning to politicians and policy makers is that “the transition happens more slowly and ultimately it makes electricity prices higher”.


Thodey argues in the report that if Australia pulls the right levers, “it is possible to achieve higher GDP per capita (as much as 36%) while ensuring growth is inclusive and environmentally sustainable”.
“In a global context, strong cooperation on climate change and trade can deliver a better outcome for Australia without significantly impacting our economic growth, where before it may have been thought impossible.”
Domestically, the report says that whatever happens in the rest of the world, Australia can make big strides to reduce our emissions through improving energy productivity, which means using less energy for the same outcome.
 The report suggests the biggest benefits will come to Australia if the world takes concerted action on climate change to limit global warming to a maximum 2C by 2100. Photograph: Michael Masters/Getty Images
Australia was weak compared with best practice internationally because it was not using the best technology available. It had the potential to become one of the most productive users of energy in the world through energy efficiency and electrification. Electric vehicles, for instance, are expected to be the cheapest form of transport after 2025 and would dominate sales by 2040.
Australia needs to prepare to adapt to global conditions whatever they are, but the biggest benefits will come if the world takes concerted action on climate change to limit global warming to a maximum 2C by 2100 rather than the catastrophic 4C rise if little action is taken.
If there is cooperative global action on climate change, Australia stands to be a big winner, the report finds. The CSIRO modelling indicates that “lower emissions from energy and greater sequestration on the land could enable Australia to achieve ‘net zero’ emissions by 2050 under the outlook vision”. Australia could capitalise on low-carbon exports such as hydrogen produced by renewable energy, countering the decline in global demand for our fossil fuels exports.
“Although other countries are also pursuing energy productivity and renewables, modelling suggests that Australia’s vast natural resources for renewable generation should lead to lower cost electricity in 2060,” the report says.


With reliable, low-carbon electricity and investor confidence in long-term policy, along with rising wages and improved energy efficiency, “by 2060 Australians are spending between 58% and 64% less on electricity as a proportion of income than they are today”.
Even if the world balks at strong action on climate change, Australia does better economically if it if embraces energy efficiency to reduce emissions.
The report’s proposed land shift would see a “stretch goal” of increasing agricultural productivity to 3% per year, meaning intensifying agriculture on the best land, using emerging technologies and boosting research and development. For instance, increasing productivity could result in revenue for crops such as winter cereals doubling by 2060.
The report suggests increasing agricultural productivity could result in revenue for crops such as winter cereals doubling by 2060. Photograph: Michele Mossop/Getty Images
Agriculture in Australia had not yet fully embraced the “digital revolution” and doing so would be a boon.
Strong global action on global warming would present opportunities for land owners to sequester carbon through carbon and environmental planting, a “significant land use shift” that would protect prime agricultural land for food. As much as half of the least productive agricultural land could be profitably switched to carbon plantings, which would offset Australia’s own greenhouse gas emissions. Additional emissions abatement could be sold as carbon credits to other countries.
“Australia has one of world’s best and largest solar resources and we can capture that and export low emissions energy to countries that don’t have that resource, to places like Japan, Korea and potentially even China,” Deverell said.
Overall, the report says that “Australia is not well prepared and that action is required to avoid the slow decline scenario”. That scenario is not a disaster, but is far less positive than it could be. CSIRO modelling found GDP growth would be 2.1% annually, real wage growth would be 40% higher in 2060 than it is now and there would be only a modest increase in energy productivity. Major cities would continue to sprawl, adding to stressful commutes and long distances to education and services.
It is possible to achieve higher GDP per capita (as much as 36%) while ensuring growth is inclusive and environmentally sustainable.
David Thodey, CSIRO chairman
With bold action, the modelling found a far more prosperous and dynamic Australia, with GDP growth of 2.76% to 2.8% annually, real wages 90% higher, average density of major cities increasing 60% to 88%, only a 6% to 28% increase in total energy use, a more than doubling of energy productivity, and net zero emissions by 2050 with global cooperation.
“This decoupling of emissions from GDP demonstrate that stronger action on environmental measures need not come at the expense of economic outcomes.”
Deverell said the report wasn’t intended as a list of policy recommendations or predictions for the future, but a chance to “get together a group of senior leaders, public sector, private sector, NGOs, (to) have an informed consensus on where we need to go”.
While trust and social cohesion were difficult to model, they were crucial for Australia’s future, he said. Trust in governments and CEOs was low, which meant Australians had little faith that decisions were made in the long-term interest of all. Without that trust, bold decisions were more difficult.
There was no “silver bullet” to restore trust, but efforts were needed to address policy over-promising, the perceived unrepresentative nature of politicians who came from narrow backgrounds and the perception that politicians favour vested interests over the public interest.
The report also emphasised equity. “We didn’t just want this to come through as a ‘here’s what we need to do to grow our economy’, but ‘here’s what we need to do to grow our economy and increase living standards for all Australians’.”
In the industry shift, the report says productivity can be boosted with increased adoption of technology, greater investment in education and skills to ensure a globally competitive workforce, and reversing the decline in education in key areas such as maths and science.
In both the slow decline and outlook vision scenarios, the report accepts official estimates that Australia’s population will reach 41 million by 2060, with Sydney and Melbourne home to between 8 million and 9 million people, and Brisbane and Perth between 4 million and 5 million. The slow decline model shows millions more living in the outer suburbs, making it harder to travel to jobs, education and services. Housing affordability remains a major problem, and social cohesion is strained.
The urban shift requires a big change in the way planning and policy supports our cities, with a growth in medium and high density living, and a focus on multiple “centres” of growth apart from the CBD, a policy that Sydney and Melbourne are already embracing.
Well-designed apartments, semi-detached homes and townhouses make up just over half of the housing stock, with a mix of reasonably priced accommodation so that essential workers can afford homes. People live closer to jobs, to education and to services and recreation.
Electric vehicles are expected to be the cheapest form of transport after 2025 and would dominate sales by 2040. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP
Car use is down, mass transit is up and electric vehicles make up over 80% of new vehicle sales in 2060. An alternative model outlined is one in which satellites cities such as Geelong and Newcastle grow quickly, and 5 million more people choose to live outside the capital cities, easing the density in the capitals.
It is the second Outlook report, following a 2015 release that focused more narrowly on water, energy and food. The 2019 report is more ambitious and brings in outside leaders to identify Australia’s key challenges and opportunities.
Deverell said it was aimed first at senior decision makers in the public and private sector, as well as NGOs and community groups. But it was “a message to all Australians that we can take control of the kind of future we want for the country”.
“By using those two scenarios we were trying to illustrate just how different the future is depending on the path that we take. We’re saying that Australians need to get together and these are the things we need to be focusing on. This is what’s really important.”

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Why The Polar Bear Is An Indisputable Image Of Climate Change

New Yorker - 

Polar bears reflect the otherworldly beauty that rising temperatures threaten to destroy. Photograph by Irina Yarinskaya / AFP / Getty
Last Sunday, a polar bear turned up in Norilsk, an industrial city in Siberia known for the production of nickel, for the first time since 1977.
Visibly sick—thin and weak, with diarrhea and watering eyes—she roamed the city, feeding from a garbage dump and resting in the lot of a sand and gravel factory.
In one haunting image, the polar bear walks toward a line of cars, her paws dirtied, her head bowed in a way that seems serene, almost deferential.
A few drivers have opened their doors and are standing beside their cars, peering out at the animal.
To reach Norilsk from the Arctic, she would have had to travel hundreds of miles.
Polar bears rely on sea ice to hunt seals, and, as it melts, they must either seek other sources of food or go hungry.
The bear’s pilgrimage, some local environmentalists speculated, was likely undertaken out of starvation.
This one image, then, seemed to encapsulate both the tragedy of climate change and the resilience of nature.
Only, it turned out, this was not what happened. A team of specialists examined the polar bear and found that her coat (still white) was too clean to have weathered such a journey. It was possible that she had been captured as a cub and raised by nearby poachers, who, fearing a recent crackdown, released her to stay out of trouble.
In any case, the wildlife experts have transferred her to a zoo, where she can be cared for and treated for the illnesses she contracted by eating garbage.
This was not the first disputed image of a starving polar bear. In 2017, Paul Nicklen and Cristina Mittermeier captured a video of a polar bear ambling across an iceless archipelago in the Canadian Arctic and feeding from trash cans. The bear was skeletal, with a patchy coat, and weak to the point of collapsing.
After National Geographic published the video, overlaid with the text “This is what climate change looks like,” it was viewed by an estimated two and a half billion people. But some scientists accused National Geographic of being loose with the facts.
There was no way of knowing that climate change was the sole cause of the animal’s starvation, they contended; it may have been merely ill or old.
In response, National Geographic published an explanation, written by Mittermeier, titled “Starving-Polar-Bear Photographer Recalls What Went Wrong” that included the line “Perhaps we made a mistake in not telling the full story—that we were looking for a picture that foretold the future and that we didn’t know what had happened to this particular polar bear.”
The photographers’ incomplete, if not incorrect, knowledge undermined the larger truth that they were trying to communicate.
The story of climate change has been told, in part, through pictures of polar bears. And no wonder: in their glittering icy habitat, they reflect the otherworldly beauty that rising temperatures threaten to destroy.
The photographs from Norilsk this past week were not precisely of a species forced out of its habitat by climate change—though, as a story of human cruelty, they are no less disturbing—but the visceral reactions they inspired were arguably an appropriate response, nonetheless, given the current crisis. Because of its nickel-mining and smelting industry, Norilsk is one of the most polluted places on Earth—the average life expectancy is about ten years shorter than in the rest of Russia.
In 2016, industrial waste from the nickel factory caused the city’s Daldykan River to run red. The presence of an animal that we are accustomed to seeing in pristine natural beauty makes the whole setting seem even bleaker and more corrosive.
Yet to see a line of cars stop to observe a creature whose habitat their emissions are destroying is like an instance of restorative justice—the culprit and victim encounter each other face to face.
It provides a rare opportunity for us to confront the far-reaching moral consequences of our seemingly benign actions, like driving.
No revelation about the situational truth of the image should feel like permission for us to simply look away and get back in our cars.

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The City Of Sydney Has Officially Declared A Climate Emergency

SBS - Charlotte Lam

City of Sydney councillors have voted to declare that climate change should be treated as a national emergency.
Activists from the Extinction Rebellion, Lord Mayor Clover Moore, Councillor Jess Miller, Councillor Jess Scully and Councillor Robert Kok at Sydney Town Hall. City of Sydney
Sydney has officially declared a climate emergency, with the city's councillors voting that climate change poses a serious risk to the people of Sydney and the rest of Australia.
Lord Mayor Clover Moore asked the council Monday night to call on the Federal Government to respond urgently to the emergency, by reintroducing a price on carbon to meet the Paris Agreement emissions reduction targets.
In 2007, the City of Sydney revealed its long-term strategic plan, Sustainable Sydney 2030, in which 97 per cent of residents said they wanted strong climate action.
“We set a goal to reduce our emissions by 70 per cent by 2030, and following the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, we set a more ambitious goal to reach net zero emissions by 2050”, the Lord Mayor said.
The council is also calling on the Federal Government to establish a Just Transition Authority to ensure Australians employed in fossil fuel industries find appropriate alternate employment.
“We became Australia’s first carbon neutral council in 2007, and as of June 2017, we’d reduced emissions in our own operations by 25 per cent, Ms Moore said.
"In 2020, we will be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy, allowing us to meet our 2030 target by 2024 – six years early.”



The Climate Council's chief executive Amanda McKenzie said Sydney’s declaration - which the City Council is expected to easily approve - underlined “just how serious the climate change issue is.”
“It is a genuine crisis,” she said. “Sydney has responded in an appropriate way.”
Earlier this year, a group of Australian councils declared a ‘climate emergency’ after a UN report warned urgent, widespread action was needed to prevent the two degrees Celsius temperature increase that could tip the planet into catastrophic global warming.

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