21/07/2019

Great Barrier Reef Authority Urges 'Fastest Possible Action' On Emissions

The Guardian - 

Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority says ‘further loss of coral is inevitable’
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority says it is ‘critical’ global temperature rises remain within 1.5 degrees. Photograph: Tory Chase
The federal agency that manages the Great Barrier Reef has made an unprecedented call for urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, warning only the “strongest and fastest possible action” will reduce the risks to the natural wonder.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has published a climate position statement that says the reef is already damaged from warming oceans and it is “critical” global temperature rises remain within 1.5 degrees.
The Coalition government has been criticised for overseeing four straight years of increases in national emissions and experts say it will not meet the country’s Paris target under current climate policy.
“Only the strongest and fastest possible action on climate change will reduce the risks and limit the impacts of climate change on the reef,” the authority said. “Further loss of coral is inevitable and can be minimised by limiting global temperature increase to the maximum extent possible.”
The climate statement was in development for more than a year and published late on Wednesday.
It says climate change is the single greatest threat to the reef and points to the “widespread impacts” already felt from back to back marine heatwaves in 2016 and 2017 that caused the mass wipe-out of corals.
“Of particular concern are projections that the reef could be affected by bleaching events twice per decade by about 2035 and annually by about 2044 if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase at the current rate,” the authority said.
“If bleaching becomes more frequent and more intense, there will not be enough time for reefs to recover and persist as coral-dominated systems in their current form.”
The marine park authority’s statement says the reduction in emissions required for the reef to survive requires both national and international effort and an “urgent and critical” acceleration of policies to cut carbon pollution.
Any further increase in global temperatures will have “further negative impacts” for reef-dependent activities such as tourism, fishing and traditional use.
“These effects are likely to include loss of properties and infrastructure, loss of cultural and regional identity and, unless urgent action is taken, subsequent declines in regional economies,” the authority said.
Environment groups said on Thursday that such a clear statement from the government’s own agency should prompt the Morrison government to act faster to address the climate crisis.
Australia’s emissions have been rising since the repeal of the carbon price.
“The Great Barrier Reef is not dead yet, but the marine park authority makes it clear that it is already under stress from rising temperatures,” Christian Slattery, a campaigner for the Australian Conservation Foundation, said.
“As the marine park authority states, any additional increase in temperatures will have further devastating impacts on the reef and flow-on effects for tourism, fishing, recreation and traditional use.
“ACF urges the federal government to listen to the experts and treat this call to action with the seriousness and urgency it deserves.”
Imogen Zethoven, the strategic director at the Australian Marine Conservation Society, said the government’s $443m grant to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation would be “wasted unless the Morrison government takes radical action to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions to save our greatest natural icon and the jobs it supports”.
Any additional increase in temperatures will have further devastating impacts.
Australian Conservation Foundation
“The prime minister, a former managing director of Tourism Australia, knows how critical the reef is to the tourism industry and to Australia’s international reputation,” she said. “As the caretaker for the reef and a daily witness to its decline, GBRMPA is crying out for immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
After the May election, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, named Warren Entsch the special envoy for the Great Barrier Reef.
In an interview, Entsch said he wanted to focus on plastic waste and warned climate activists in northern Queensland had had a negative impact on the region’s economy.
Environment minister Sussan Ley said she accepted accept the scientific advice, “both that climate change is the biggest threat to the reef and that there are actions we can continue to take to build a more resilient reef.”
“The government is taking meaningful action to reduce global emissions and we investing $1.2bn in addressing threats such as water quality, marine litter and the crown of thorns star fish.”
In 2017, Australia avoided an “in danger” listing for the reef from Unesco’s world heritage committee.
But its status will be reassessed by Unesco next year and Australia must submit a state of conservation report to Unesco in December.
An outlook report for the reef from GBRMPA is also due soon.

Links
at No comments:

We Went To The Moon. Why Can’t We Solve Climate Change?

New York Times - John Schwartz

The original moon shoot inspired billions. Calling climate action a moon shot isn’t a perfect parallel — but maybe we should try it anyway.
Credit NASA/Reuters
Could a “moon shot” for climate change cool a warming planet?
Fifty years after humans first left bootprints in the lunar dust, it’s an enticing idea. The effort and the commitment of brainpower and money, and the glorious achievement itself, shine as an international example of what people can do when they set their minds to it. The spinoff technologies ended up affecting all of our lives.
So why not do it all over again — but instead of going to another astronomical body and planting a flag, why not save our own planet? Why not face it with the kind of inspiration that John F. Kennedy projected when he stood up at Rice University in 1962 and said “We choose to go to the moon,” and to do such things:
“ … not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win …”
Credit Associated Press


But President Kennedy did not have to convince people that the moon existed. In our current political climate, the clear evidence that humans have generated greenhouse gases that are having a powerful effect on climate, and will have a greater effect into the future, has not moved the federal government to act with vigor. And a determined faction even argues that climate change is a hoax, as President Donald Trump has falsely stated at various times.
And the moon shot had a clearly defined goal: Land on the moon. A finish line for fighting climate change is less clear. Back to 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? (We have already passed 412 parts per million.)
Still, it should come as no surprise that Kennedy’s stirring words and accomplishments have made the idea of a moon shot one of the most enduring metaphors for our time. Roger Launius, a retired NASA chief historian and author of a new book, “Apollo’s Legacy: Perspectives on the Moon Landings,” said that “moon shot” has become shorthand for “a big push,” and it’s almost become a trope: ‘We need a ‘project Apollo for name-the-big-thing-of-your-choice’.”Climate change is certainly an urgent challenge. Rising levels of greenhouse gases are raising temperatures worldwide, leading to shifting weather patterns that are only expected to get worse, with increased flooding and heat waves, and drought and wildfires afflicting millions. The task of reversing that accumulation of greenhouse gases is vast, and progress is painfully slow.
The idea of a moon shot for climate has been gaining supporters. Beto O’Rourke and Kirsten Gillibrand use the idea in their presidential campaigns, as did Michael Bloomberg in unveiling his recently announced $500 million Beyond Carbon campaign. In a commencement speech this year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he said, “It is time for all of us to accept that climate change is the challenge of our time.” He concluded, “It may be a moon shot — but it’s the only shot we’ve got.”
Does the enduring metaphor fit the task of countering the grinding destructiveness of a warming planet?
Climate presents more complicated issues than getting to the moon did, said John M. Logsdon, historian of the space program and founder of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.
In 1970, Dr. Logsdon wrote a book, “The Decision to Go to the Moon,” that laid out four conditions that made Apollo possible. In the case of the space program, the stimulus was the first human spaceflight of the Russian cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin, which filled Americans with dread of losing the space race. In an interview, Dr. Logsdon said it has to be “a singular act that would force action, that you couldn’t ignore.” Other moon shot prerequisites, he said, include leaders in a position to direct the resources necessary to meet the goal on “a warlike basis,” with very deep national pockets — people like President Kennedy, who began the program, and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, who brought it to fruition.
Finally, Dr. Logsdon said, “the objective has to be technically feasible.” Scientists and engineers had told Mr. Kennedy that “there were no technical show stoppers in sending humans to the moon — it would just take a hell of a lot of engineering.”
What would be the “action-forcing stimulus” for a climate moon shot, he asked? He suggested it would have to be something deeply dramatic and immediate, like “Manhattan going under water.” What’s more, he noted, “Apollo did not require changing human behavior” as fighting climate change would, through the need for measures like carbon taxes or changes in consumption patterns.
One more important difference between sending people to the moon and solving a problem like climate change was cited in a recent editorial in the journal Nature, which noted that attempts to counter climate change have lobbyists fighting against them. The editorial said “for decades, energy corporations have stymied global efforts to make equitable reductions to greenhouse-gas emissions because such efforts would reduce their profits. Influential private companies are central to today’s Earth shots, but the historical moon shot approach will be ineffective if potential conflicts of interest are not addressed.”
Kate Marvel, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, lauded the inspiration that the moon shot provided, but said she had a less sweeping example of a good comparison to the challenge ahead: fixing the ozone hole. It required international cooperation, detailed in the Montreal Protocol of 1987, and a concerted effort of nearly 200 countries to rid the world of the chlorofluorocarbons that were damaging our atmospheric protection. “There are bumps on that road, but largely the ozone hole is on the road to recovery because of actions that humans took,” she said.
Yet she treasures a necklace that recreates the Apollo 11 trajectory from the Earth to the moon. “It’s incredibly nerdy,” she said, but it’s also a reminder of a national act that people think of “with nothing but good will.” And so, she said, comparing a climate push to the Apollo program makes a kind of sense. “Just because a metaphor is not exact,” she said, “doesn’t mean it’s not useful.”
If we did choose once again to do an important thing because it is hard, the task ahead would be more than technical, said Hal Harvey, chief executive of the research firm Energy Innovation. The deceptively simple goal, he said, should be to “decarbonize electricity, and then electrify everything.” That would involve building up renewable energy and dropping electrical generation from fossil fuel plants, and building up the use of technologies like heat pumps that can make home heating and cooling more efficient. China has invested heavily in electric buses, electric scooters, and other ways to stop burning fossil fuels. There are further advances in industrial processes and power systems engineering that will help, he said, ticking off a dizzying array of avenues that would allow society to reach those goals.
But mostly, he said, it will require a shift in national attitude.
“The moon shot technology we need is political will.”
Links
at No comments:

Former President Of Kiribati Tells SF To Step Up Fight As Climate Change Threatens To Swallow His Island Country

San Francisco Chronicle - 

This file photo taken on September 7, 2011 shows then Kiribati President Anote Tong in Auckland. Photo: AFP / Getty Images
Nestled in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is Kiribati — a country destined to be doomed, and eventually erased, by climate change. Scientists, the United Nations and even its former president, Anote Tong, all agree: The small island home to 116,000 people will be engulfed by rising sea levels.
It was shortly after taking office in 2003 that he realized the peril his country was in, Tong said in an interview with The Chronicle at the Fairmont hotel in San Francisco.
“The responsibility of my country fell squarely on my shoulders,” Tong said. “When the science started coming in, it was a matter of urgency.”
That science showed how “the results of sea level rise and increasing storm surge threaten the very existence and livelihoods of large segments of the population” in Kiribati, according to a United Nations report from August 2015.
In this March 30, 2004 file photo, Tarawa atoll, Kiribati, is seen in an aerial view. Photo: Richard Vogel / Associated Press
Tong would become renowned around the world as the man leading a country that could soon cease to geographically exist.
He’s in San Francisco this week to speak at the Climate and Ocean Conservation event at Salesforce Tower on Wednesday night. The event gathers CEOs and leaders from over 230 corporations to discuss and explore “climate resilience and ocean conservation.”
Tong caught the world’s attention when he purchased approximately 20 square kilometers of land in Fiji in 2014 — a purchase he describes as an “investment,” a place his people can migrate to just in case his people need it.
Some of Tong’s constituents were upset with him for suggesting an impending migration from their homeland.
“The media went on to extrapolate that I’m moving my people to Fiji, but I never, ever said that,” Tong said. “I had no plans to move people... but somebody else in the future might need to do it.”
The purchase also sent a worldwide message.
“It was a very loud statement to the international community,” Tong said. “They were not listening. And if you’re not listening, then you will never do anything for us.”
He’s now sending a statement to CEOs in the Bay Area, reminding them that companies can either be “complicit or helpful” in stopping the further warming of the planet.
Tong said one man does seem to be particularly silent and dismissive on the issue of climate change: President Trump.
“I’ve been disappointed by his lack of climate change initiative,” Tong said. “But he was elected... and people need to choose for themselves who they think will be strong on this.”
Since leaving office in 2016, he has spent his time speaking to leaders around the world on the global efforts needed to save countries like his own.
Tong said he admires the environmental awareness prevalent in San Francisco, but he said tech companies in Silicon Valley need to step up to expedite progress in combating climate change.
“This is a battle we’re in —a huge, unprecedented battle,” Tong said. “I wonder if these companies can use their resources to change our world for the better.”
When he visits cities like San Francisco, Tong said he sees potential to counteract the current administration’s policies.
“Your federal government isn’t helping, but that’s when cities like San Francisco and other states in your country step in,” Tong said.
In terms of specific changes he wants to see happen, Tong refers to the need for a rapid global response.
“Climate change is only now becoming known as a fight for the survival of humanity,” Tong said. “When I come here to speak, I also come here to inspire people to act quickly.”

Links
at No comments: