28/08/2019

Amazon Fires: Have We Reached The First Tipping Point For Runaway Climate Change?

Monash University - Paul Read


Paul Read
Paul Read is Senior Lecturer, School of Psychological Sciences.
His focus is on global sustainability, natural disasters, and intergenerational equity based on global UN/WHO data linked to policy and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Images of the Amazon burning from space show a black cloud extending over half of South America, eclipsing the sun 3000 kilometres away in Brazil’s capital, Sao Paulo, the entire continent dotted with incendiary markers representing, as of Sunday, 78,000 fires, half deliberately lit since the start of August.
The season of the ‘queimanda’, celebrated by cattle ranchers on 10 August, saw 2500 new fires lit in 48 hours. The cattle ranchers hoped to signal their support for their far-right, Italian-born President Jair Bolsanarro, the ‘Tropical Trump’ who has weakened ecological protections and aims to build the Brazilian economy at any cost.
When he came to power in January, he said he would "not give one more inch" to the Indigenous people of the Amazon; indeed, he’d run a highway through the middle of it to access land and mining resources.
The blaze over the Amazon Basin, roughly the same size as Australia at 7 million square kilometres, threatens nine countries, 30 million people, 400 tribes, custodians of the Amazon for 11,000 years, three million species, 20 per cent of global oxygen, and 25 per cent of the world’s carbon sink. Scientists fear, at its worst, that half the Amazon could be lost above ground.

A wider problem
Problematically, soil degradation from climate change has already put the Amazon on track to lose half its capacity for carbon absorption by 2035. Already compromised, what’s also not yet talked about is that eight metres of peat beneath the Amazon, if set alight, has the potential to spark a subterranean mega-fire that could burn for decades. Together, they would belch the world’s entire remaining carbon budget into the atmosphere, demolishing the target for the Paris Agreement and sending the world into net zero emissions territory without any remaining buffer.
What lies beneath: above-ground fires in the Amazon are only part of the problem.
Land masses known for being covered in ice have started to burn due to a combination of low humidity and climate change drying out fuel sources. The Siberian tundra, Alaska and Greenland are developing bigger fire seasons every year.
The Amazon sits on 35,000 square kilometres of peat, but the Congo sits on 150,000, and Borneo on 440,000. If the world’s peat caught alight, it would pump out enough emissions to power the US economy for 200 years. This is without considering what lies beneath the polar regions. With drier climates, ignition of existing fuel-loads are more likely. With poverty comes more ignition due to arson, where the same processes play out worldwide.

The Australian story
In Australia, it’s been confirmed that most of our 62,000 fires per year are deliberately lit, but the reasons are somewhat different to those emerging in South America. A small number of Australian fires are lit by lightning and reignition points, but recent satellite analyses confirm about 90 per cent are due to human activity, both accidental, suspicious or deliberate.
If the world’s peat caught alight, it would pump out enough emissions to power the US economy for 200 years.
About half are lit by children and adolescents, following the same age-crime curve that affects every crime in every nation, but the true arsonist aiming at maximum destruction is much older and acts alone, at least in Australia. They lurk on the urban fringes where bushland meets the edges of development. This is a crime that has equal parts psychopathology and poverty, whereas fires in South America are almost entirely economic and 99 per cent human.
Arson in the developing world is always driven by poverty. While about 2000 fires are burning the Amazon, there are 7000 fires burning in Angola, 1000 in neighbouring Zambia, 3000 in the Congo, 800 in Australia and 550 in Indonesia.
Arson in the developing world is always driven by poverty.
Ravaged by civil war, small landholders in Africa use fire to clear and replenish the soil in a wasteland littered with landmines. Their motive is entirely economic, as it is in Indonesia and South America.
The same sorts of motives play out as poor farmers respond to poverty, which has its origins, in some part, with us in the developed world. There are mining companies paying local villagers to light fires across protected reservations in the Congo. Protecting mountain gorillas has become an exercise in helping locals develop out of poverty, resist the incentives given by mining companies, and poachers for bushmeat or Chinese medicine. Likewise, the orang-utans of Borneo are threatened by mining interests, and the Amazon Basin is threatened by companies such as BHP and Vale in search of iron ore and gold.
Apart from mining, illegal logging and soy plantations, 70 per cent of burning in the Amazon is stimulated by the needs of local cattle ranchers, and 80 per cent of their produce is for export – Europe, America and China being the biggest consumers. About 57 percent of soy produce in the Amazon Basin goes to China. Illegal timber goes to Europe and the United States.

Lessons to learn
It’s easy for the developed world to pass judgement. But we should remember that South America is a place of rich culture and home to a people who live far more sustainably than we do in Australia. They live almost as long and are happier compared to Australia, despite having only a third of its wealth and being five times more sustainable.
It’s easy for the developed world to pass judgement. But we should remember that South America is a place of rich culture and home to a people who live far more sustainably than we do in Australia.
Some of their countries are the most sustainable, both in terms of human and planetary outcomes. To put it in context, if the remainder of the carbon budget were fairly given to every person on Earth, Australians would have used up their share by 2022. If everyone in the world lived like Australians, we would pump out enough carbon emissions to exceed 8 degrees Celsius warming by the end of the century.
But if we all lived like Costa Ricans, the world could prosper sustainably and happily forever.
Perhaps the developed world needs to find a way of rewarding the custodians of the Amazon and other planetary factors, so they don’t have to resort, in desperation, to burning it.
Indeed, a bit more equity in Australia would also go a long way towards reducing its own problem with arson. On the edges of our bushland, children are neglected, parents work 60-hour weeks, and transport and welfare systems remain undeveloped. Growing social chaos is driving some to express their dismay with fire.

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Rising Force: How Extinction Rebellion Hopes To Make A Difference

Sydney Morning Herald - Jack Nicholls*
Massive protests against inaction on climate change.

The arrest of 56 protesters in Brisbane earlier this month marked the beginning of a wave of environmental strikes across the planet planned to ratchet up this Spring.
September 20 will see thousands of Australian school children walk out of their schools in solidarity with the Global Climate Strike. Earth Strike, a general strike for workers, is being planned for a week later, and non-violent civil disobedience group Extinction Rebellion have marked October 7 as the opening of their week-long Spring Uprising, when crowds of ordinary citizens across the globe are preparing to disrupt their towns and cities.
In a world where a million species are set to go extinct as a result of human activity, the Arctic is on fire, and our government responds by doubling down on a huge new coal mine, law-abiding Australians are being radicalised to an extent not seen since the Vietnam War and a sizeable minority are, increasingly, turning to symbolic acts of breaking the law. It seems that after years of "clicktivism", street politics are back.
Caught off guard by this sudden rise in climate and animal rights activism, state and federal governments have introduced bills to heighten penalties for farm trespass, while the Queensland government is also criminalising the possession of "lock-on" devices such as handcuffs shielded within PVC pipes. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has claimed that such devices have been booby-trapped with butane and glass shards – a trap that would presumably also harm the protester within and would be illegal under existing law.
Queensland protesters deny the claims, stressing their commitment to non-violence. Meanwhile there is little sign that a government crackdown will deter those committed to civil disobedience, meaning Australia could soon be witnessing a high-profile clash between the state and environmentalists willing to go to jail in order to stand against what they see as an existential threat to our way of life.
Although there are dozens of active environmental groups across Australia, the largest group openly committed to peaceful civil disobedience is Extinction Rebellion, which calls for the declaration of a climate emergency, bringing down carbon emissions and a reform of our democracy.
The international organisation gained prominence by shutting down five London intersections for a week in April this year, and in Australia 1200 people signed up as "rebels" in the days following the Federal Election. Its membership at meetings tends towards female and middle-class, and most have had no history of activism until catastrophic climate news compelled them to action.
British actress Emma Thompson speaks to the media at Oxford Circus in London in April, during an Extinction Rebellion demonstration that blocked the road. Credit: AP
Laura Lucardie, a teacher who took part in the Brisbane day of protest, is frank about the motivation for lawbreaking actions like blocking traffic: “What we have tried in the past has not worked; there is no more time to play with ineffective methods.”
Maddy Butler, a Melbourne mum who joined the group earlier this year, agrees: “It might be uncomfortable, it might inconvenience some people, but I believe that Extinction Rebellion's philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience is what we need to bring about large-scale change.”
The Prime Minister has called environmental protesters "un-Australian criminals", but there is a long Australian folk tradition of celebrating outlaws and troublemakers. Civil disobedience was also central to the highest-profile environmental action of the 20th century – the successful campaign to save the Franklin River from a dam.
Before becoming leader of the Australian Greens, Dr Bob Brown was best known for leading the Franklin campaign. In 1982 Brown and hundreds of others were arrested as part of an action which ultimately prompted the Hawke government step in and cancel the dam project.
Bob Brown and fellow protesters at Tasmania's Franklin River in 1983. Credit: John Krutop
Retired from politics but still an environmental campaigner, Brown strongly supports the new generation of activists, saying: “It takes a lot of courage to bring a city to a halt, peacefully. Whether common sense can prevail against the greed factor is the biggest question hanging over all of us, but Extinction Rebellion is a very positive plus on the common sense prevailing.”
He also believes the Franklin campaign holds lessons for today.
“The Franklin campaign didn’t stop any bulldozers,” Brown explains. “What it did do is draw national and international attention to what was happening. That is the power of civil disobedience. It is very often confused by people, who say that ‘we are going to stop this by putting our bodies in the way'.
"Well, the companies have the bulldozers and the state have the tanks. And ultimately, successful civil disobedience depends on the only thing that overrides tanks and bulldozers, and that is an activated public opinion.”
Brown successfully mobilised that public opinion to halt the Franklin Dam, but when he used similar methods this year with his high-profile convoy to "Stop Adani", the mine was green-lit and its backers in Parliament returned to power.
In today’s political landscape, with governments that make a virtue of not confronting our looming environmental catastrophe, and with all citizens complicit in the destruction of our environment, how can activists force change? And is aggravating motorists the best way to get them onside?
Miriam Robinson, an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson, draws a clear line between single-issue campaigns of the past and what the new activism is trying to achieve.
“Extinction Rebellion is different from other protest movements we have seen in recent years because the aim is not to work on individual causes, such as stopping the Adani mine, or 'locking the gate' against fracking.
Those projects have often been successful, but they come at enormous cost to the people involved, in time and energy and even fines and court appearances. They usually require people to go out to remote locations to blockade or occupy a place for extended periods. And for every victory, there are many defeats.
Police arrest an Extinction Rebellion protester after the intersection of Margaret and William streets in Brisbane was blocked earlier this month. Credit: AAP
"What we are doing with Extinction Rebellion is seeking to bring business as usual to a halt, stopping traffic and blockading cities for extended periods. To apply pressure on such a scale and, if necessary, get so many people arrested that governments are compelled to respond. Research shows that if we can get 3.5 per cent of the population to get actively involved, change is inevitable.”
Whether or not change is inevitable, there are parallels here with Brown’s campaigns that sought to sway undecided Australians, even as they stoked anger among ideological opponents.
In Brown’s view, “it’s about drawing in that great mass of people who sit and go about their daily lives not wanting to be involved. I hear all the time, ‘you’ve got to convert the people of Clermont before you go and oppose Adani, you’ve got to convert the dam workers before you oppose the dam’.  It’s nonsense. That’s like saying we should convert Vladimir Putin before we go for freedom of the press.”
The last time Australia faced sustained large-scale protest was the 2011 Occupy Movement, but that attempt to indefinitely hold territory in the heart of Australian cities made protesters relatively easy to contain. Today’s activists are more agile, gathering for short-notice disruptions then dispersing, or adopting "swarming tactics" to block traffic for short periods while allies wander down the traffic jams apologising to drivers and explaining their cause.
So far, authorities have been cautious in responding to trespass and roadblocks, publicly condemning civil disobedience acts but largely refraining from making mass arrests. It would be hard for them to know where to crack down even if they wanted to, except with a huge display of force.
The environmental movement may seem to be coalescing around the messianic figure of Greta Thunberg, but the experience on the ground is messy and fractured. In Brisbane, young activists shouted “tear this system to the ground”, but the law-abiding school strikers are more notable for their humorous tone, while Extinction Rebellion organisers offer wry greetings to any undercover police presence at public meetings, welcoming them as “part of the world too, and as concerned with this as much as anyone".
Even within Extinction Rebellion, local communities plan and launch their actions independent of a central power, and beyond that vegan, Indigenous, anti-fracking and Grey Power climate activists are working with solidarity but little cross-communication.
Technology has also empowered climate activists. The school strikers utilise social media to realise their collective power in numbers that previous generations of young activists were never able to muster. Every action is filmed and shared online, and strategic discussions which once took place around a campfire now play out nationwide over Facebook or encrypted messaging apps.
Today’s lawbreaking activists may be the spiritual successors of 1980s environmentalists, but their fragmented organisation and reactive tactics are reminiscent of their contemporaries on the streets of Paris or Hong Kong.
Violet, a young Extinction Rebel recently arrested for chalking "Climate Emergency" outside the Institute for Public Affairs, makes the comparison herself: “I am very inspired by the Hong Kong protesters' call to "move like water". At a glance, it looks pretty effective.”
Once water finds its groove it is hard to stop, as those who wanted to dam the Franklin River once found, and when it gathers in force it can be unstoppable. After decades of passionate climate protests have been largely ignored, will today’s turn to civil disobedience work?
It is easy to dismiss protesters like Violet as radicals, but when looking back at past Australian protest movements - such as those around women’s liberation, the Vietnam War or same-sex marriage - it is striking how many have been vindicated by history, and how fast public opinion can turn once people start identifying with the figures they see being arrested.
Asked to reflect on his own lifetime of activism, Bob Brown is sanguine: “I’m just a 74-year-old human being about to depart the planet, and I think the exciting thing is not the older leaders who have hung onto ideas from the ’60s and ’70s which are starting to get some potency again, but the young people who are searching for ideas and they won’t find any new formula. All the formulae are there, they just have to be taken up.”
In just 20 years, Brown and his fellow Franklin Dam campaigners moved from prison cells to parliament, and the Greens party they helped found has become a mainstay of the Australian political landscape.
In another 20 years, our current generation of politicians will be gone and likely remembered for their failure to rise to a moment of disorientating change as climate change tips out of control. When searching for their successors, perhaps Australia could do worse than looking to the young people taking a stand today.

*Jack Nicholls is a Melbourne author and a volunteer with Extinction Rebellion. 

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Trump Skips G7 Climate Meeting, Says He Won't Risk US Wealth For 'Dreams And Windmills'

SBS

Climate change sceptic President Donald Trump says he won't jeopardise the US wealth for "dreams and windmills" but goes on to say he's an environmentalist.



US President Donald Trump, responding to a question about climate change after skipping a G7 session on the issue, says American wealth is based on energy and he will not jeopardise that for dreams and windmills.
Trump, who in 2017 pulled the US out of the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord involving nearly 200 countries and has described global warming as a "hoax", also sought to portray himself as an environmentalist at a news conference at the close of the Group of Seven summit in France.
"I feel that the United States has tremendous wealth. The wealth is under its feet. I've made that wealth come alive. ... We are now the No. 1 energy producer in the world, and soon it will be by far," Trump told reporters on Monday when asked about his views on climate change.
"I'm not going to lose that wealth, I'm not going to lose it on dreams, on windmills, which frankly aren't working too well," he added.
Trump's administration has reversed US environmental protections put in place by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama and has weakened the Endangered Species Act wildlife conservation law.
The Republican president skipped a session on climate change and biodiversity at the summit, instead holding bilateral meetings with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The G7 leaders discussed the rainforest fires in Brazil and agreed to draw up an initiative for the Amazon to be launched at the UN General Assembly in New York next month.
French President Emmanuel Macron downplayed Trump's absence.
"He wasn't in the room, but his team was," Macron said. "You shouldn't read anything into the American president's absence.... The US are with us on biodiversity and on the Amazon initiative."
Trump called himself an environmentalist, noting that he had filled out so many environmental impact statements as part of his work as a real estate developer.
"I want the cleanest water on earth. I want the cleanest air on earth. And that's what we're doing. And I'm an environmentalist, a lot of people don't understand that. I have done more environmental impact statements probably than anybody that's ... ever been president. And I think I know more about the environment than most people," Trump told reporters.
Environmental activists heaped scorn on Trump's remarks.
"Trump's phoney brand of 'environmentalism' means gutting the Endangered Species Act, bowing down to polluting industries, and denying climate change while the world burns," Travis Nichols, a Greenpeace USA spokesman, said in a statement.

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