18/07/2019

Australia’s Strategic Thinkers Can’t Continue To Ignore Climate Change

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute -  


Mark Beeson
Mark Beeson is professor of international politics at the University of Western Australia. 
Hugh White’s latest book, How to defend Australia, has attracted much attention. As the book’s back cover rightly claims, White is ‘Australia’s most provocative, revelatory and realistic commentator on defence’. But, as he himself might say, this is both good news and bad news.
The good news is that we have someone who is willing to think the unthinkable—the possibility that the US might leave the region and that we ought to think about getting nuclear weapons if it does—in a way many policymakers and strategic types find intensely discomfiting. The bad news is that White’s book is not nearly as ‘realistic’ or ‘revelatory’ as we might have hoped.
He’s not alone. On the contrary, the intellectual universe inhabited by ‘serious’ strategic thinkers is one that continues to revolve around a very traditional notion of possible security threats and the best ways to respond to them. One thing there does seem to be agreement on among Australia’s strategic elites, however, is that we ought to be spending much more on defence, despite real concerns about the appropriateness, viability and effectiveness of recent acquisitions.
But for an epistemic community that prides itself on its hard-headedness, it’s remarkable that climate change remains a niche concern and one that only really matters if it affects traditional geopolitics. While the recent speech by the chief of the Australian Defence Force, Angus Campbell, on the implications of climate change in the Pacific is a welcome acknowledgement of reality, his remarks were primarily concerned with the possible opening it provides China.
Campbell apparently assured his listeners that the defence organisation ‘has been preparing for the impact of climate change “for years”’. Whether his audience of senior public servants were reassured by that observation isn’t clear. Given that the ADF’s response to most issues usually involves buying more weapons and preparing for the worst, perhaps they were. That has been, after all, the default response of Australian strategic thinkers for most of our history as an independent nation. As White’s book reminds us, it still is.
No doubt many readers will think this is the self-indulgent nit-picking of an over-privileged limp-wristed liberal and/or inner-city greenie with no conception of strategic reality. Perhaps so. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I, or—much more importantly—the vast majority of the world’s scientific community, aren’t right to be deeply concerned about our collective, entirely unsustainable, impact on the biosphere.
There’s one big difference between the possible threat posed by climate change and that posed by, say, China, India or Indonesia. As even the most bellicose and alarmist of the Canberra commentariat would (presumably) concede, it’s very difficult to conceive of any circumstances in which any of the usual suspects are actually likely to pose a direct existential threat to Australia.
Climate change, by contrast, is already happening, getting worse more quickly than even pessimists thought, and likely to affect the world’s driest continent particularly badly. Our very own water wars are a taste of what’s to come.
In the meantime, we spend increasingly large sums of money on weapons systems that no one expects to use, even in the unlikely event that they actually work as advertised. White implicitly acknowledges the inherent implausibility of traditional security thinking when he points out that even if Australia’s trade routes were threatened (a slightly more plausible scenario), ‘we would have no practical options to protect our seaborne trade from attack’. Quite so.
It’s also important to recognise that when—not if—the impact of climate change gets much worse, it is sure to exacerbate all of the ‘usual’ challenges that keep strategic types up at night, plus a few new ones that don’t bear thinking about. Environmental refugees are a problem that looks especially ill-suited to a military response. Or perhaps not, if our principal ally’s policy on border protection is anything to go by.
Indeed, Campbell isn’t the only one who has been turning his mind to the strategic consequences of climate change. His counterparts in America’s military establishment have also been war-gaming the implications of unmitigated climate change. They’ll need to do a lot more of it given that their commander-in-chief doesn’t think it’s happening and is seemingly intent on doing everything he can to make it worse.
Tragically, the most immediate, direct existential threat that Australia (and every other country, for that matter) needs to defend against is one that threatens the very foundations of human life itself, not to mention democracy and a civilisation worthy of the name. Hyperbole? Sadly, almost certainly not. Schoolchildren seem to get that, even if some of the smartest people in this country still appear to be incapable of doing so. When we have a real and immediate danger to confront, do we really want to waste our very limited time responding to the improbable variety?

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The Counter-Intuitive Solution To Getting People To Care About Climate Change

The Conversation - 

Zero-emissions energy is part of the solution to climate change. U.S. Department of Energy/flickr
In a May episode of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, Bill Nye the Science Guy took a blowtorch to a miniature globe. It was an effort to startle Americans out of their complacency over climate change.
Whether on late-night TV or the nightly news, alarm is a recurring feature of climate change stories. Climate news is full of references to worsening wildfires, melting glaciers and rising seas.
However, this emphasis on doom and gloom can leave citizens feeling helpless and hopeless that they can make a difference.

‘Green New Deal,’ Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO). The segment with Bill Nye begins at 18:20.

“Threatening messages can capture the public’s attention and create a sense of urgency, leading to a heightened level of concern,” according to Climate Access, a non-profit research group. “But worry by itself is not an effective motivator for action, as it more often leads to resignation and hopelessness.”

Rethinking climate coverage
One approach that can better engage news audiences is a style of reporting known as solutions journalism.
Solutions journalism is reporting on ways that people and governments meaningfully respond to difficult problems. It is an alternative to just reporting on the problem itself.
Solutions stories are not fluffy, good news stories. Instead, they are hard news stories meant to highlight what has worked based on tangible proof.
The approach has been shown to increase interest in a subject, and to elevate the public’s sense of self-efficacy.

More facts ≠ more concern
No subject is arguably more timely for a solutions-oriented approach right now than climate change. The evidence could not be more clear. The planet has heated up steadily since the Industrial Revolution. Most of that warming has happened over the past four decades.
The Earth’s average global temperature from 2013 to 2017, as compared to a baseline average from 1951 to 1980. Yellows, oranges and reds show regions that are warmer than the baseline. NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
Despite all the evidence, mustering the political will to take climate change more seriously is a persistent problem. Why is that?
There are many reasons why politicians and the public have difficulty engaging with climate change. For example, climate change can feel distant, and there is often little immediate gratification for dealing with it.
Unfortunately, academics, governments and journalists have long assumed that citizens would take action if only they had more facts about climate change.
However, there is growing evidence that more facts do not translate into more concern. In a widely cited study, Dan Kahan, a professor of law and psychology at Yale Law School, and his colleagues found that people who had more knowledge about the science of climate change were not necessarily more concerned about it. Instead, lack of concern had much more to do with people’s personal beliefs and values.

Effective climate communication
Effective climate change communication challenges the idea that more facts produce more concern. Instead, effective climate change communication considers that tapping into people’s values is a far more effective strategy for engagement.
Good climate communicators ask the question: what is it about people’s experiences and circumstances that make them unlikely to engage with the climate crisis right now?
Effective climate communication also begins with the premise that climate audiences are not simply a monolithic whole, equally interested or disinterested in the climate crisis. Good climate communication calibrates messages of hope or alarm depending on who the messages are being communicated to.

Engaging by example
Solutions-oriented journalism on climate change provides examples of how ordinary people are making a difference. It illustrates how those changes are having a tangible, beneficial improvement on their lives.
For instance, climate stories can reflect locally sourced food and its health impacts, or the cost savings on gas from buying an electric vehicle.
This style is markedly different from the conventional doom-and-gloom approach to climate reporting, which builds on the standard of individual action. Instead, a solutions-oriented approach to climate news underscores the importance of collective action and political mobilization.
Students protest the Belgian government’s climate policies in Brussels in February 2019. Shutterstock
Climate as crisis
There is also an important role in environmental communication for what Steve Schwarze, a University of Montana communication studies professor, refers to as “environmental melodrama.”
Highly dramatic accounts of personal or political struggle are typically associated with the oversimplification of complex problems. But melodrama can also produce “productive forms of polarization,” according to Schwarze. For example, melodrama can galvanize a group of citizens around a common cause, or it can be deployed to point out who the villains in the story are.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that a one-size-fits-all approach to climate change communication is not sufficient for engaging news audiences.
Instead, effectively engaging the public on climate change requires a careful calibration of messages framed around solutions, the urgency of the climate crisis and individuals’ reasons for engaging or not engaging with the subject in the first place.

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Young Climate Activists ‘Most At Risk’ Of Being Spied On By AFP

New Daily - Cait Kelly

Children and young adults who go to protests are the most likely Australians to have their phones tracked and monitored by police, a prominent security analyst has warned in a submission to an inquiry cybersecurity laws.
Dr Stanley Shanapinda of La Trobe University said that politically minded youth are “the most at risk” of having their digital footprint watched by the AFP.
“They’re the most at risk because of their social media habits, they’re a lot more vocal. As a community they’re the most likely to be targeted,” he told The New Daily. 
The Australian government can legally spy on activists fighting against environmental issues. Photo: Getty
Under the metadata laws passed in 2015 the Australian Federal Police force (AFP) has the power to view the metadata of citizens who are deemed as a risk to national security, up to two years old without a warrant.
Dr Shanapinda argues that both Liberal and National politicians have highlighted young climate change activists, Adani protestors and The Greens as threats.
“Senior members of the government have labelled the protest actions of the young people and the Greens … as threats to national security and the national economic interests, openly in national media,” he said.
During the federal election, Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned that The Greens are a greater political threat to national and economic security than Clive Palmer or Pauline Hanson.
Dr Shanapinda said that these concerns over Greens policies, and young protestors could open the door to party members and activists having their metadata watched.
“Opposing the Adani coal mine and protesting against it, on climate change on ideological bases, may therefore legally be categorised by the government as posing a threat to national security, if the government wanted to, because of its economic and job creation value,” Dr Shanapinda said.
Protestors having their phones used against them has become an increasing issue around the globe.
Young people during a Climate Change Awareness March in March. Photo: Getty
People hitting the streets in Hong Kong recently accused the Chinese government of silencing their protests by hacking an encrypted messaging app used by thousands of demonstrators.
To protect democratic freedoms Dr Shanapinda said the Australian government should introduce a warrant process for location information.
“To ensure the democratic right to protest free from the fear of surveillance, aided by big data analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities,” he said.
While it may sound Orwellian – the Australian government spying on school kids – when the laws were passed no one thought they would be used on journalists, a fact that was proved wrong last week, Dr Shanapinda points out.
Anti-Adani protestors hit the streets of Brisbane in July. Photo: Getty
The laws came under fire after it was revealed the AFP had accessed metadata from journalists’ phones almost 60 times within a year.
In June, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton confirmed that a plan to create new powers to spy on Australians is still on the table.
Speaking on Insiders, Mr Dutton said the government had no wish to spy on its own citizens but called for a “sensible discussion” about whether the Australian Signals Directorate should have the power to do so.
“I think they are reasonable discussions to have in the 21st century,” he said. “We saw an attack on the major political parties in the run-up to this election, a cyber-attack.”
Dr Shanapinda said under the current laws there are not enough protections for citizens.
Senator Richard Di Natale and Larissa Waters attend an anti-Adani protest. Photo: Getty
“Now we realise protections for those laws don’t go far enough,” he said.
“If you want to use them on things not terror-related, that’s the big missing gap.
“When we speak about young people who want to stop climate change, there are no protections for them. Is it likely? Possibly.”
Metadata can be used to see where a person is within one-meter accuracy, what apps the person is using and who they’re calling.
While the government could seek a warrant to access the content of encrypted messages, several apps like Signal have said they would not comply with a request.
Signal developer Joshua Lund wrote in a blog piece last year: “By design, Signal does not have a record of your contacts, social graph, conversation list, location, user avatar, user profile name, group memberships, group titles, or group avatars.
“The end-to-end encrypted contents of every message and voice/video call are protected by keys that are entirely inaccessible to us. In most cases now we don’t even have access to who is messaging whom.”

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