10/08/2019

Australian Government Brushes Off UN’s Urgent Climate Warning

SBS - SBS | AFP | AAP

 Humanity faces increasingly painful trade-offs between food security and rising temperatures within decades unless emissions are curbed and unsustainable farming and deforestation halted, according to a landmark climate assessment.


UN World Warning: Humanity Faces Painful Trade-Offs

The federal emissions reduction minister has defended Australia's land management practices after a new United Nations climate change report called for changes in the way the world produces and consumes food.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned efforts to limit global warming while feeding a booming population could be wrecked without swift and sweeping changes to how we use the land we live off.
The report on land use and climate change highlighted the need to protect remaining tropical forests as a bulkhead against future warming.
Greenpeace activists hold a banner in front of the United Nations before a news conference on the Special Report on Climate Change and Land after IPCC's 50th session in Geneva, Switzerland, 08 August 2019.  EPA/MARTIAL TREZZINI
It offered a sobering take on the hope that reforestation and bio-fuel schemes alone can offset mankind's environmental damage, underlining that reducing emissions will be central to averting disaster.
"Land is a source of emissions as well as a sink," IPCC chair Hoesung Lee told AFP.
"Obviously you want to reduce emissions from land as much as possible. But that has a lot to do with what's happening to the other side of the equation: greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from the energy sector."
But Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor said Australia is already absorbing emissions from land management.
"This is a very, very important success story in Australia. Farmers, in particular, haven't been given the credit they deserve for the role, the enormous role, they've played on this front," he told ABC News on Friday.
But the minister brushed off concerns about the role meat-heavy diets play in climate change, suggesting the report was "forcing" people to become vegan.
Federal Minister for Energy Angus Taylor
"We're not going to tell people what they should be eating, that's just not the role of government," he said.
Land is intimately linked to climate. With its forests, plants, and soil it sucks up and stores around one-third of all man-made emissions.
Intensive exploitation of these resources also produces huge amounts of planet-warming CO2, methane and nitrous oxide, while agriculture guzzles up 70 percent of Earth's freshwater supply.
National Farmers Federation president Fiona Simson said the food warning should send "a shiver down your spine".
The Australian red meat industry has a target to be carbon neutral by 2030, she added, noting the local agriculture industry produced ust a fraction of the world's food and fibre.
But Ms Simson was surprised the report flagged reducing food waste as a means to reduce climate change.
"There are tonnes and tonnes of food that is wasted at the point of production," she told ABC News.
"Sometimes it's about misshapen vegies, carrots that look weird or those sorts of things, but also sometimes we just haven't got the labour to pick the produce in the fields.
President of the National Farmers Federation Fiona Simson
As the global population balloons towards 10 billion by mid-century, how land is managed by governments, industry and farmers will play a key role in limiting or accelerating the worst excesses of climate change.
Farmers for Climate Action want the federal government to implement a national strategy on climate change and agriculture, and to speed up the transition to clean energy.
"With NSW marking one year since it was 100 per cent drought-declared ... and farmers across the country hurting from droughts, heatwaves and other extreme weather events, it is clear that climate change is already hurting Australian agriculture," the group said in a statement.
"Farmers are adopting climate-smart agricultural practices, including soil carbon sequestration. But agriculture cannot be left to carry the burden on this alone."
Teenage climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, who along with a group of activists presented IPCC co-chairs with a thank you letter in Geneva, said she hoped governments would act on the report's findings.
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"Of course if you are a very powerful person in a very powerful position then I think you should definitely read it," the 16-year-old said.
"I just hope that the conclusion of this report becomes in a way common knowledge, so everyone knows the importance of those numbers and facts within a bigger perspective."

Trade-offs
The IPCC is the world's leading authority on climate change. Last year it warned that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees - the optimal level aimed for in the Paris climate deal - would be impossible without a drastic draw down in greenhouse gas emissions.
Its land-use report presented a string of looming trade-offs in using land for climate change mitigation.
Forests, an enormous carbon sink, can be regenerated to cool the planet. But with industrial farming covering a third of land today, there's limited space.
Hoesung Lee, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. AAP
Bioenergy in the form of vegetation used to sequester carbon also has potential. But room for that must be carved from cropland, pastures or existing forests.
The report said that a "limited" allocation of land for bioenergy schemes could indeed benefit the climate.
It warned however that deployment at a scale needed to draw down billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere each year "could increase risks for desertification, land degradation, food security, and sustainable development."

Devastating impacts
The 1,000-page report takes a deep dive into the systems we use to feed ourselves and the devastating impacts they are wreaking.
Not only does agriculture and its supply lines account for as much as 37 percent of all man-made emissions, but current industrialised production and global food chains also contribute to vast food inequality.
The report noted that while there are currently two billion overweight or obese adults, 820 million people still don't get enough calories.
In addition, a third of all food produced is currently either lost or wasted, adding to mankind's carbon footprint.


David Attenborough briefs British MPs on climate change

The IPCC summary paper mostly steered clear of the controversial call to limit meat consumption but did burnish the credentials of "plant-based foods" and their ability to mitigate global emissions.
"There's a wide range of food systems that rely on meat, and many people rely on meat for protein," Cynthia Rosenzweig, a NASA climatologist, and report author told AFP.
"But we do need to develop low greenhouse gas meat-producing systems."

Temperature matters
The report considers a quintet of human development projections, from a low-consumption global society that feeds itself sustainably, to a resource-intense future where arable land is squeezed out by huge-scale bioenergy projects.
But under all scenarios, one axiom held true: the higher the temperature, the higher the risk.
"New knowledge shows an increase in risks from dryland water scarcity, fire damage, permafrost degradation, and food system instability, even for global warming of around 1.5C," said Valerie Masson-Delmotte, an IPCC co-chair.
At 2C the risk of food insecurity ticks over to "very high".
"It's not only about reducing emissions," said Ms Thunberg.
"The science says that to stay below 1.5C of global temperature rise we need to make unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.
"Those are not my words. Those are their words."

Links
  • Climate Change and Land — IPCC
  • Land is a Critical Resource, IPCC report says
  • Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet
  • Report: Adapt plant-based diets and 'look after the land' to tackle climate change
  • Eat less meat to save the Earth, urges UN
  • Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report: Climate Change and Land
  • Climate crisis reducing land’s ability to sustain humanity, says IPCC
  • How climate’s impact on land threatens civilisation – and how to fix it
  • Commonwealth Bank Warns Climate Change Could Slash Farm Productivity
  • Action Now’: The Farmers Standing Up Against ‘Wilful Ignorance’ On Climate
  • This Is A $15 Trillion Opportunity For Farmers To Fight Climate Change
  • Act Now On Emissions Says Farmers For Climate Action
  • The Future Of Farming In The Era Of Climate Change
  • Greta Thunberg: World leaders must prove they've listened to climate activists
  • Qantas CEO Alan Joyce warns against climate change panic
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    Farmers Call For National Strategy On Climate Change And Agriculture

    The Guardian - 
    The IPCC special report on climate change and land found limiting global heating to below 2C can only be achieved by reducing emissions from all sectors – including land and food. Photograph: Tim Wimborne / Reuters/REUTERS
    An Australian farming group has called for a fully funded national strategy to deal with climate change and agriculture, warning farmers don’t have enough support to manage increasing risks associated with global heating.
    It comes as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report on climate change and land, released in Geneva on Thursday, found limiting global heating to below 2C can only be achieved by reducing emissions from all sectors – including land and food.
    That will involve transforming food production and land management, given agriculture, forestry and other types of land use account for 23% of human-induced greenhouse emissions globally.
    The report finds even the current levels of global heating are increasing the risks of water scarcity, soil erosion, vegetation loss, fire damage, coastal degradation, permafrost thawing and declines in crop yields.
    It finds the climate crisis is affecting all aspects of food security – including availability, price and nutrition – but that coordinated action to cut global emissions could simultaneously improve land resources, food security and nutrition and help to address hunger.
    Verity Morgan-Schmidt, the chief executive of Farmers for Climate Action, said Australian farmers were already dealing with the effects of global heating, including worsening droughts, changing frost conditions and heatwaves.
    But as the risks associated with global heating increase, she said it was becoming more difficult for farmers to adapt on their own.
    Farmers are responsible for managing much of Australia’s ecosystem, with 48% of Australia’s land privately owned or leased for agricultural production.
    Morgan-Schmidt said industry-wide measures were already being developed to reduce the sector’s climate footprint, including a grains industry sustainability framework that is under development and the red meat sector’s target to become carbon neutral by 2030.
    She said individual farmers were also taking action through increased soil carbon sequestration, revegetation, and the adoption of “climate-smart” agricultural practices.
    But she said an overarching government strategy for the agriculture sector was still lacking and farmers were looking to the federal government to better coordinate currently disparate efforts by industry, government and the non-government sector to deal with climate.
    “What we still don’t have in the year 2019 is a national strategy on climate change in agriculture. There’s still no actual framework to help farmers manage these risks and implement solutions,” she said.
    “That’s why we’re calling for a fully funded national strategy on climate change and agriculture.
    “There’s a lot of good things happening but there is more work to do and we need support to do that.”
    The minister for energy and emissions reduction, Angus Taylor, said: “The government recognises the importance of the land sector to Australia and is partnering with industry to improve productivity, sustainability and resilience.”
    “Our suite of policies include the establishment of a Future Drought Fund, a national program of water reform, and the Emissions Reduction Fund which supports Australian businesses, farmers and land managers to take practical actions to reduce emissions and improve the environment.”
    Mark Howden, the director of the ANU Climate Institute and an IPCC vice-chair, is one of the report’s authors.
    He said the climate crisis was “rapidly ramping up existing threats to the land, reducing its ability to feed and support populations around the world and impacting on ecosystems”.
    “At the same time, the land sector is currently contributing to climate change, even as it potentially offers some of the solutions to reducing greenhouse gases,” he said.
    Howden said the land sector alone could not address the crisis and that cutting emissions from fossil fuels remained “absolutely vital”.
    But he said improving land management would have multiple economic, environmental and health benefits.
    “Better land management not only delivers win-wins for farmers, communities, governments and biodiversity but also helps address climate change,” he said.
    Dermot O’Gorman, CEO of the World Wide Fund for Nature-Australia, says there “is tremendous potential for vegetation and soil to suck up and store greenhouse gases to help achieve a 1.5-degree future”.
    “Right now too much of Australia’s soil is degraded or being eroded away. Too many forests have been lost and remaining trees continue to be cut down.
    “Australia can turn this around by protecting our remaining forests, transforming marginal grazing or cropping land into profitable carbon farms by returning trees, and adopting innovative farming techniques.”

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    Big Money Starts To Dump Stocks That Pose Climate Risks

    Bloomberg - Kelly Gilblom

    After years of meetings and shareholder resolutions, some funds are starting to simply divest from coal and oil stocks.
    Exxon persuaded the SEC to block a shareholder resolution that pushed the oil giant to do more to address climate risks. 
    Earlier this year, one of Meryam Omi’s deputies at Legal & General Investment Management sat down with board members and managers from Exxon Mobil Corp. to discuss how the oil giant could address climate change. LGIM, which manages about $1.3 trillion, is one of Exxon’s top 20 shareholders.
    The Exxon delegation listened, but it didn’t accept the suggestions, says Omi, LGIM’s head of sustainability and responsible investment strategy. Around the same time, Exxon persuaded the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to block a shareholder resolution that pushed the oil giant to do more to address climate risks.
    So, in June, London-based LGIM announced that it had dumped about $300 million worth of its Exxon shares and would use its remaining stake to vote against the reappointment of Exxon Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods. “There’s got to be an escalation,” Omi says.
    As the risks of climate change have become more pronounced, so have efforts by major investment firms to push companies in greener directions. They tried talking. Then they started backing shareholder resolutions. Now, LGIM is at the forefront of a more aggressive, and controversial, tactic: divesting.
    “You cannot have the same conversation for 15 years with no results,” Omi explains. (Exxon responded to LGIM’s announcement by saying that it publishes an annual tally of emissions from its operations and is on track to meet targets for reducing methane emissions.)
    Momentum is gathering, says Mark Lewis, who leads climate change investment research for Paris-based BNP Paribas Asset Management. He likens it to the divestment campaign that forced companies participating in apartheid-era South Africa to change course, and he invokes the spirit of Gandhi: “They’ve ignored us and laughed at us. I think now they’re fighting us. So next we win.”
    But he knows it won’t be easy.
    In March, as he helped the BNP Paribas press team put the finishing touches on an announcement that its actively managed funds would exit almost €1 billion ($1.1 billion) of coal stocks as early as next year, he thought the news might cause a few “ripples” and not much more. In fact, Lewis was bombarded with emails and calls, not all of them polite. “It surprised me how big the reaction was,” he says.
    Lewis, who earlier in his career was a utilities analyst at Deutsche Bank AG and deputy head of investor relations for German power company EON SE, had formed close business relationships, even friendships, with coal executives. He says the decision to cut coal was painful, but ultimately he had to face the economics.
    Demand for thermal coal, the kind used to generate electricity, is declining in much of the world as governments seek to cut carbon dioxide emissions. Some asset managers are deciding it’s risky—for their clients and the planet—to keep shoveling capital into companies with environmentally unsustainable business strategies.
    This year almost every major public oil company faced at least one shareholder resolution about climate change. Those proposals won record support. (Michael R. Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, in June launched an effort to phase out every U.S. coal-fired power plant by 2030.)
    Most money managers prefer engagement to divestment, and funds designed to track indexes have no choice. Climate-Action 100+, a group of money managers overseeing more than $33 trillion, works to influence the largest corporate emitters of greenhouse gases. So far the organization has persuaded Royal Dutch Shell Plc to set short-term climate targets and publish a report on its lobbying of governments.
    Members backed a shareholder resolution that asked BP Plc to detail how each new capital investment aligns with the Paris Agreement adopted at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2015. That resolution, supported by BP’s management, won the approval of 99% of shareholders in May. Mining company Glencore Plc has agreed to limit coal production.
    Climate Action 100+ members “use this engagement, both the process and the outcomes, to inform their own voting and investment decisions,” says Stephanie Maier, the director of responsible investment at HSBC Global Asset Management, who also serves as chairman of Climate Action 100+’s steering committee. “For certain investors this may ultimately include divestment, but that would only be when all other options have failed.”
    Climate activists say the awakening of the world’s money to the perils of global warming is too little, too late. But for some people inside money management, the speed of change is hard to believe. At LGIM, Nick Stansbury says he remembers the day in December 2016 when he was called into a meeting with about 25 of his fellow portfolio managers. Understanding the implications of climate change was going to become a priority, they were told.
    Stansbury says he already had deep misgivings about the future of the oil market. Oil companies’ value depends on investors believing that demand for crude will always grow. For 100 years, that belief had been justified.
    But if renewable-energy sources gain market share and crude demand stutters, the market would go haywire, he says. That could trigger a huge re-rating of major oil companies—of which LGIM holds more than $12 billion in shares. “It was a lightbulb moment,” he says.
    He spent a year analyzing different parts of the energy market to try to draw some conclusions. But he knew his clients wanted more. On an airplane from Oslo to London in early 2018, staring at a blank piece of paper, he pondered how to build a comprehensive financial model. He’d need data (lots of it), a team of analysts, and months to work on it. He got what he needed. When the model ran for the first time in October, it took hours to go through its paces.
    The results confirmed his fears: Tiny tweaks to government policies could cause oil demand to halve or to almost double by 2050. The crude market could become exceptionally volatile, and investors would probably start fleeing within the next five years.
    The model helped LGIM rank companies most at risk to climate change. “Uncertainty around the level of demand growth creates massive instability in the way oil markets work, and that has all sorts of implications for investors,” says Stansbury, who’s now head of commodities research.
    LGIM’s Omi says this kind of rigorous analysis has persuaded big companies, typically resistant to change, to begin making serious strategic shifts.
    When LGIM divested some oil company stocks last year, she says, some of the fund managers protested, “These are really good stocks!” She replied, “I know they might be good stocks for you, but these are the rationales. This makes sense for our clients.”

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