Australia Leads The G20 Nations' Pack In Aid For Coal-Fired Power

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

Subsidies for coal-fired power production almost tripled in the three years to 2016-17 among G20 nations, with Australia providing among the largest support, an international study has found.
The report by UK think tank, the Overseas Development Institute, found aid for such power stations soared from US$17.2 billion ($24.7 billion) in 2013-14 to $US47 billion in the most recent year. It's in contrast to pledges made by the 20 biggest economies in 2009 to phase out subsidies to reduce the risks of climate change.
Total support for coal, including production, was US$63.9 billion in the 2016-17 year, the report found. Of that, about US$3.1 billion went to fiscal aid for communities to transition off coal.

Exhaust plumes from cooling towers at the Jaenschwalde brown coal-fired power station in eastern Germany. Credit: Sean Gallup

The highest amounts of total support to coal consumption were identified in Indonesia at US$2.3 billion per year, Italy and Australia, both about US$870 million, the US at US$708 million, and the UK with US$682 million, it reported."These tens of billions of dollars a year of G20 support to coal are not just locking in the high-carbon
economy and leading to stranded assets, they are also a missed opportunity to support a clean energy transition and to achieve other sustainable development objectives," the study said.
Those subsidies, which count public support for coal such as China's US$9.5 billion to annual aid construction of plants and mining in other nations - were likely an underestimate.
The report noted the G20 nations indirectly support the coal industry "by failing to charge companies for the health and climate damages they cause". A separate report out last month from the International Monetary Fund estimated fossil fuel subsidies by all nations for coal, gas, oil and other fossil fuels totalled US$5.2 trillion in 2017.
Comment was sought from Energy Minister Angus Taylor and the Minerals Council. A spokesman for Resources Minister Matt Canavan noted the most recent report from the Productivity Commission on trade assistance found tariff and budgetary assistance for mining to be "negligible."
The ODI paper comes as leaders of the G20 nations including Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison are due to gather in Osaka, Japan, on Friday and Saturday.
According to the Financial Times, the summit hosts have bowed to pressure from the Trump administration to downplay climate change.
The draft communique will omit the words “global warming” and “decarbonisation” and diminished the importance of the Paris climate accord compared with previous summits, the paper said.

'Ecological crisis'
Jamie Hanson, head of campaigns at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said Australia was in an "ecological crisis driven by climate change".
"Coal is the primary cause of the climate damage that is causing extinctions all over the country, drought and fire that has torched ancient rainforests, and that has killed half the Great Barrier Reef in the last five years," he said.
"Climate-destroying government handouts to the coal industry defy all logic - especially now, when we know that clean renewable energy is the cheapest form of new power."
Separately, Australia's climate ambassador Patrick Suckling has argued at a United Nations conference in Bonn, Germany that the country's carbon reduction efforts were "having a positive effect".

Links

• REPORT G20 coal subsidies: Tracking government support to a fading industry (pdf)
• IMF: Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Remain Large - An Update Based on Country-Level Estimates
• Federal Government: Australia - progress to meeting our 2020 target (pdf)
• Australia's greenhouse gas emissions up for four years in a row
• 'Huge gamble': Coalition faces $18b hole if climate plan trips up
• City of Sydney officially declares 'climate emergency'

Are Australians More Worried About Climate Change Or Climate Policy?

The Interpreter - Matt McDonald

Climate change is again on the public mind but this didn’t translate to a strong message at the ballot box for action. 

Wandandian, New South Wales, during the 2018 drought. (Photo: Brendon Thorne via Getty)

The latest Lowy Institute poll indicates that Australians are increasingly concerned about climate change and its implications. Three figures are particularly telling.
First, and perhaps most striking, Australians have identified climate change as the most critical threat to Australia’s “vital interests”. Almost two thirds (64%) of respondents described climate change as a critical threat, above cyber attacks (62%), terrorism (61%) or North Korea’s nuclear program (60%), for example.
While perhaps surprising, this continues a steady increase in this view of climate change in the Lowy polls over the past five years. It also builds on a 2017 Senate Inquiry into the national security implications of climate change. And as I wrote The Interpreter that same year, the results of an unofficial survey of academic researchers in the field of international security indicated that these researchers overwhelmingly identified climate change as the most pressing threat to global security.

Second, the latest poll indicates that Australians believe energy policy should primarily orient around reducing carbon emissions. This policy priority was identified as the most important by 47% of respondents, higher than reducing household bills (38%) or reducing the risk of power blackouts (15%).
Third, 61% of Australians surveyed agreed with the statement that global warming is “a serious and pressing problem (and) we should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs”. This is the highest point for over a decade (since 2008).

Illustration: Matthew Martin

So is this grounds for hope that we will see substantive action on climate change in Australia? Will public attitudes ultimately drive new and ambitious climate policy?
Aside from the ideological commitments of this government, there are three big reasons to be cautious.
First, the poll indicates significant demographic differences between Australians. While younger Australians seem deeply concerned about climate change and its implications, older Australians are more ambivalent. Over three quarters of Australians aged 18-44 (76%) agreed with the proposition that “climate change is a serious and pressing problem (and) we should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs”. By contrast, less than half of those aged over 45 (49%) agreed with this proposition. Combined with significant differences in attitudes to climate change between rural and urban voters, and based on levels of wealth and education, this suggests continued divisions across the country that policy-makers may struggle to overcome.

Second, Australians had a chance at the ballot box only weeks ago to send a strong and meaningful message about their desire for climate action, and largely didn’t. While the Greens did quite well, Australians ultimately voted in a government that had gone to the election with minimal emissions reduction targets, a commitment to new fossil fuel projects, no new emissions reduction policy and a track record of steadily rising emissions.
Third, we’ve been here before. One fascinating feature of the Lowy poll figures on climate change concern since 2006 is the seemingly inverse relationship between public concern and policy ambition. The high point of support for action on climate change was the first year of the survey in 2006 (68%), when John Howard was overseeing continued rises in greenhouse emissions and refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. This began to drop quickly and significantly under Labor governments, reaching a low point when the carbon tax came into effect in 2012 (36%). Under subsequent conservative governments from 2013, when Tony Abbott was elected promising to repeal the carbon tax, public concern has steadily grown to the current figure of 61% (2019).
These latter two points suggest that when Australians are ultimately faced with supporting strong climate action, they get cold feet. Perhaps this is the product of effective mobilisation by forces and voices for climate inaction. But it probably shouldn’t be this easy for public opinion to be manipulated, at least not to the scale we’ve seen with climate change.
A simpler, if more cynical, interpretation is that when we think we might need to make sacrifices to act on climate change, our concerns about climate change itself starts to wane, at least relative to other considerations.

>Protestors in Melbourne in May demand action on climate change. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty)

The challenge for substantive policy action all this poses is significant.
It involves overcoming divisions across the country on this issue, encouraging Australians to recognise and prioritise the threat of climate change itself over action designed to address it, and developing  alternative narratives to the (often misleading) claims about the irrelevance of Australian mitigation action or the economic costs of transitioning away from fossil fuels. It should also ideally involve Australians recognising obligations to outsiders more vulnerable to climate change, less responsible for climate change and less able to adapt to it.
The big question is whether any political leaders in Australia are capable of harnessing current concern about climate change and sustaining broad community support for policy that substantively addresses it.
Time will tell. Although if the scientists are right, we’re running out of it.

Links

• Senate report: climate change is a clear and present danger to Australia’s security
• What keeps global security academics awake at night
• As Extinctions Loom, Biodiversity Warnings Fail To Resonate With Governments, Media
• Morrison Sprints To Adani Approval
• Government Accused Of Hiding Full Extent Of Climate Change
• In 2018 The Australian Government Chased Its Energy Tail. Here's A More Hopeful Story
• Australians Disagree On How Important Climate Change Is: Poll
• Climate Change Threat Now Tops Australians' Concerns, Lowy Poll Finds
• Support For Action Surges, As Majority Say We Face Climate Emergency
• A Record Share Of Australians Say Humans Cause Climate Change: Poll

Sydney Declares A Climate Emergency – What Does That Mean In Practice?

The Conversation - Chris Turney

Sydney has become Australia’s first major city to declare a climate emergency. AAP Image/Stephen Saphore

Late on Monday night, the City of Sydney became the first state capital in Australia to officially declare a climate emergency. With climate change considered a threat to human life, Sydney councillors unanimously supported a motion put forward by Lord Mayor Clover Moore to mobilise city resources to reduce carbon emissions and minimise the impact of future change.
The decision sees Sydney join a variety of local and national governments around the world, in a movement that is increasingly gaining momentum. In total, some 658 local governments around the world have made the same declaration, with the UK and Canada committing their national governments to the global movement in just the past two months.
An official declaration of climate emergency puts a government on a “wartime mobilisation” that places climate change at the centre of policy and planning decisions.
While interpretations differ on what a “climate emergency” means in practice, governments have established a range of measures to help meet the targets set by the Paris climate agreement. Under this agreement, 197 countries have pledged to limit global temperature rise to less than 2℃ above pre-industrial levels, and ideally no more than 1.5℃.
With 2018 having brought all manner of record-breaking climate extremes, and global average temperatures projected to reach 3.2℃ above the pre-industrial average based on current national pledges and targets for greenhouse emissions, Sydney’s recognition of a national emergency is both highly appropriate and also a major turning-point for Australia.
Although a signatory to the Paris Agreement, Australia’s greenhouse emissions have risen over the past four years since the repeal of the carbon price. With Australian emissions most notably increasing around transport, the United Nations climate discussions currently being held in Bonn have raised concerns over the nation’s ability to meet its Paris commitments.

Economic impacts
With the global cost of inaction on climate change projected to reach a staggering US$23 trillion a year by the end of the century (equivalent to around five 2008 global financial crises every year), several nations are already ramping up their Paris Agreement commitments ahead of schedule. The UK recently announced its intention to be carbon-neutral by 2050.
Australia is particularly vulnerable to the future financial costs of climate change, with economic models suggesting losses of A$159 billion a year through the impact of sea level rise and drought-driven collapses in agricultural productivity. The cost for each household has been put at about A$14,000.
After Sydney’s declaration, 150 faith leaders on Tuesday signed an open letter endorsing the decision, and describing the climate issue as a moral challenge that transcends religious belief. They have called for an urgent mobilisation to reach 100% renewable energy by the year 2030, and for an end to the approval of any new coal and gas projects, including Adani’s controversial Carmichael coal mine in Queensland.
The recent court ruling against the proposed Rocky Hill coal mine in the New South Wales Hunter Valley – a decision made partly on climate grounds – could mark a crucial turning point in the fortunes of future mining projects.
As part of its emergency declaration, Sydney has also called on the federal government to establish a “just transition authority” to support Australians currently employed in fossil fuel industries. This is an urgent issue and a crucial part of the transition to a low-emissions economy.
A major nationwide training program will be needed to help re-skill the estimated 8,000 people who work in fossil-fuelled electricity production, and to help fill the tens of thousands of new jobs in renewable energy-related fields.
With the scale of change required to decarbonise the global economy and hopefully avoid a 2℃ warmer world, the need to support communities across Australia and overseas will likely become an increasing challenge for governments around the world. Putting ourselves on an emergency footing could help provide precisely the impetus we need.

Links

• The City Of Sydney Has Officially Declared A Climate Emergency
• Blockchain and carbon offsetting can help cities reduce emissions – but sometimes simpler is better
• UK becomes first country to declare a 'climate emergency'
• Cutting cities' emissions does have economic benefits – and these ultimately outweigh the costs
• Landmark Rocky Hill ruling could pave the way for more courts to choose climate over coal
• The Climate Crisis Is Our Third World War. It Needs A Bold Response
• Climate Change Doomsday Report Predicts End Of Human Civilisation
• Time To Flick Climate Emergency Switch: A Plea To Our New Parliament
• The Heat Is On Over The Climate Crisis. Only Radical Measures Will Work
• Come Senators, MPs, There's A Climate Emergency Raging
• The Guardian View On Extinction: Time To Rebel
• Biodiversity Crisis Is About To Put Humanity At Risk, UN Scientists To Warn
• Our Carbon Budget Is All But Spent, But Who In Canberra Is Counting?