26/12/2019

(AU) Home Affairs Warned Australian Government Of Growing Climate Disaster Risk After May Election

The Guardian - 

Exclusive: Department’s brief said that ‘coordinated national action’ was needed to ward off increasing disruptions
Home affairs warned Australian government of “more frequent and severe heatwaves, bushfires, floods, and cyclones”. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AP
 The government was warned by the Department of Home Affairs after the May election that Australia faced more frequent and severe heatwaves and bushfires, and that livelihoods would be affected without effective action on climate change.
The department’s incoming government brief to the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, warned of “disasters” exacerbated by climate change.
“The physical effects of climate change, population growth, and urbanisation mean that without effective action more Australians’ livelihoods will be impacted by disasters into the future and the cost of those disasters will continue to grow,” the brief stated.
“Coordinated national action to drive efforts to reduce these risks and improve national resilience is required.”
The brief, obtained under freedom of information, said disasters were only going to get worse.
“Life in Australia is increasingly disrupted by disasters. Australians will experience – as we did this summer – more frequent and severe heatwaves, bushfires, floods, and cyclones. These will increasingly occur concurrently.”
The brief quoted Deloitte Access Economics figures putting the cost of disasters to the Australian economy at $18.2bn a year, rising to $39bn by 2050.
Scott Morrison has ruled out a change in climate policy in response to the bushfire crisis. Since returning to Australia from a holiday in Hawaii on Saturday night, Morrison has been touring fire-affected regions of New South Wales.
While those defending the prime minister’s decision to take leave have frequently referred to the bushfire and disaster response as primarily a state issue, a chart put together by the department in the brief puts the prime minister on equal footing with state premiers and chief ministers when it comes to crisis coordination arrangements.
Incoming government brief for home affairs showing crisis coordination arrangements. Photograph: Home Affairs
The brief noted that while state and territory governments are considered the first responders, the federal government’s role is to support the governments through national coordination of efforts in the event crises cross state borders, as well as developing and implementing national mitigation policies.
“The Australian government provides support to the states and territories when coordinated assistance is requested [or] jointly manages a crisis with state and territories if the crisis has the potential to affect, or has affected multiple jurisdictions.”
The document said the federal government had responsibility for a national crisis coordination centre for hazard monitoring across the country, as well as responsibility for the national aerial firefighting centre.
In April the government set up the national disaster risk reduction framework with $130.6m set out over five years to help state and territory governments implement the strategies in the framework.
The framework identifies climate risk as part of the overall national disaster risk, but strategies are focused on identifying potential disaster risks and collecting data on disasters, rather than specific action on climate change.

Links
at No comments:

(AU) How To Lose Friends And Influence The Security Of Your Nation

Sydney Morning Herald - Clive Hamilton*

It’s uncomfortable when a belief you have long held is contradicted by new facts. Even more so if an entire worldview comes under pressure from the evidence. Psychologists call it "cognitive dissonance" and it explains why it is so hard to change our minds even though we flatter ourselves that we base our opinions on the evidence.
The evidence linking bushfires to climate change is overwhelming. Credit: Nick Moir
In the political domain, perhaps the most powerful source of discomfort is the fear that if we change our views and express a new opinion then we will be cast out of the community of those who share and reinforce our beliefs. When worldviews are at stake, this community can actually give us our identity. They are "my people".
It’s not surprising that most people most of the time find ways to explain away or ignore evidence that contradicts their beliefs. So we talk to those who agree with us, limit ourselves to media that confirms our biases, and attack those presenting contradictory evidence as somehow disreputable or purveyors of fake news.
As a person from the political left, when I decided to write a book about Chinese Communist Party interference in Australia, I found myself experiencing this cognitive dissonance. As I researched and wrote the book, Silent Invasion, my worldview underwent an upheaval.
I had to discard and replace many of the assumptions and biases I had developed since my teenage years. My beliefs about modern China, the role of the United States in the world, the US alliance, intelligence agencies, the functioning of democracy and national identity – all underwent dramatic change.
The attacks on me came thick and fast, mainly from my colleagues on the left, criticisms that often upset me. One prominent left-wing intellectual began a commentary on my book by asking how a "principled, progressive writer like Clive Hamilton" could write a book like Silent Invasion. As if deciding to remain baffled, he didn’t consider the obvious answer, spelled out over the book’s 100,000 words; that is, the evidence.
Instead, many on the left believed that for some inexplicable reason I had become an anti-Chinese racist. For them, my long record of anti-racism, the fact that Silent Invasion was launched by Chinese-Australians, and the fact that it is now being read widely in a Chinese translation, defy explanation and are best ignored.
Like everyone, through my life I have clung to beliefs well after they had been disproven by any cool assessment of the facts. But in the case of Chinese Communist Party interference in Australia, I decided to confront the facts head-on and take the pain. The pain was more than I anticipated. Apart from the vicious social media and the slanders from various public figures, I lost friends, including my most valued political supporter.
For over 20 years before turning my attention to China, most of my work, including five books, was focused on climate change. When in the mid-1990s I first began reading what the climate scientists were saying I could see the enormity of the implications. For many years only a handful of people were ready to face up to the facts. Even the major environment groups, much to my frustration, took years before they worked climate change into their established patterns of thinking.
Many people on the conservative side of politics have found the evidence from scientists too threatening for their worldviews to accommodate. The more environmentalists began to raise the alarm, the more resistant they became, because accepting the facts would mean conceding political ground to their mortal enemy. So they adopted various ways of downplaying, reframing or just denying the evidence.
The Prime Minister and Opposition leader continue their tours of bushfire-affected communities.


The Prime Minister and Opposition leader continue their tours of bushfire-affected communities.

The scientists continued to go about their work, which not only confirmed their earlier analysis but showed the situation was worse than they thought and the calamities initially anticipated for later decades were arriving much sooner.
Some conservatives constructed conspiracy theories to explain why so many of the world’s top scientists and eminent scientific bodies had concocted the story of climate change or seriously exaggerated its effects. Rejecting climate science had become a core political belief. It defined who they were.
Now, any conservative who begins to think the scientists might be right risks accusations of betrayal and a kind of excommunication. Few people have the stomach for that. However, to keep one’s self-respect, when the facts become overwhelming, anyone other than a pure ideologue must sooner or later confront them, despite the discomfort and pain.
The evidence that the catastrophic bushfires ravaging our country have been intensified by climate change is overwhelming, and consistent with everything climate scientists have been warning about for more than 20 years. Nothing is more important for the future of our country than to face up to the implications of what the climate scientists have been telling us, and to take far-reaching action.
So I am appealing to the many conservatives who have admired my "courage" for tackling the issue of Chinese Communist Party interference to reassess their beliefs about climate change. I can’t promise it will be easy to undo deeply held opinions and rearrange your worldview. It means conflict with your political confreres. You may lose friends.
But the reason for opening yourself up to the evidence could not be more compelling – doing our best to save what we value above all else, our country, and the future of our children.

*Clive Hamilton is professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University.

 Links
at No comments:

(AU) How Is Australia Tackling Climate Change?

BBC Reality Check - Jack Goodman

Australia's fire season has been unprecedented in its danger. Getty Images
The Australian government is facing criticism over its climate policies as the country deals with devastating bushfires and a historic heatwave.
It has contributed to the long-running debate about the country's approach to climate change. So what is it doing to reduce carbon emissions?
Australia is one of the world's biggest per capita greenhouse gas emitters.
Under the Paris Climate Agreement, created to tackle rising temperatures, Australia set a target of a 26-28% reduction in emissions compared with 2005 levels by 2030.
These goals have been criticised for being too low, and last year the United Nations (UN) reported that Australia was not on track.
The UN found that: "There has been no improvement in Australia's climate policy since 2017 and emission levels for 2030 are projected to be well above the target."
About half of the G20 countries (those with the biggest economies), including Australia, are falling short.
Bushfires have killed at least nine people and razed hundreds of homes. Getty Images
The Climate Change Performance Index ranked Australia last out of 57 countries responsible for more than 90% of greenhouse gas emissions on climate policy.
It highlighted the country's no-show at a UN climate summit in September and its withdrawal from an international fund to tackle climate change.
However, the Australian government maintains it is on course to meet its 2030 commitments.
Australian emissions will be 16% lower than 2005 levels in 2030, according to projections published in December.
But it says it will meet the 2030 targets by counting the quantities of carbon already reduced under the previous international climate agreement, the Kyoto Protocol.
Source: International Energy Agency BBC
More important than specific targets - Australia as a fossil fuel producer has so far failed to acknowledge the need to plan for a world of net zero emissions, says Prof Myles Allen, a climate change expert at the University of Oxford.
Net zero means balancing carbon emissions with carbon removal.

The coal industry
Australia is among the world's largest exporters of iron ore, uranium, coal and natural gas.
It was the fourth largest producer of coal in 2017, according to the International Energy Agency.
Phasing out coal is considered crucial to limiting global warming to within 1.5C, but the Australian government is continuing to back the industry for the role it plays in the economy.
Facing criticism over his handling of the bushfires and response to climate change, Australian prime minister Scott Morrison said he will not make "reckless" cuts to the coal industry.
The government recently approved the construction of a controversial new coal mine - which could be the biggest in the world and would export coal to India.

What are some of the government's climate policies?
A central climate plan is the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF).
The government put forward an additional A$2bn (£1bn) spread over 15 years to help businesses and farmers reduce emissions, bringing up total investment to $4.5bn. The government says it will deliver 100 million tonnes of emissions reductions.
Though aspects of the ERF have been praised, "Australia has adopted a piecemeal approach to emission reduction," said the OECD (an economic body which monitors richer, industrialised nations) in a 2019 report.
The government needs to show how existing instruments, such as the ERF, can be scaled up to reach Paris Agreement goals, added the report.
Analysis - Roger Harrabin
Scientists round the world are looking aghast at the politics of climate change in Australia.
It's one of the most vulnerable countries on the planet to rising temperatures, yet there is still denial about the impacts of rising CO2 levels on events like the current wildfires.
There is no serious doubt among scientific institutions that rising global temperatures are leading to record heat.
The heatwaves are driven by a natural phenomenon but they are adding to an already over-heated planet.
In the election, the victorious Liberal (conservative) Party categorised climate change as a metropolitan fad for urban professionals, and gained support for the world's biggest coal mine.
Coal is the dirtiest fuel and scientists say we shouldn't be building more coal-fired power stations if we want to stabilise the climate.

Links
at No comments: